


As They Walk On By

by Keith_Wilde



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 1988, Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Allusions to Violence, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Vietnam, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chicago Blackhawks, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Happiness, Explicit Language, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Jock!Jonny, M/M, Mentions of vietnam war, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prom, Slow Burn, Trauma, Violence, War, gay pining, idiots to lovers, like really slow burn, mild drug use, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26315386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keith_Wilde/pseuds/Keith_Wilde
Summary: The year is 1969. The place, a small town just outside Chicago. The people are Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, and they have no idea what they're getting into.This is a story about war, pining, falling in love with your best friend, addiction, trauma, and holding on for dear life while the record spins.
Relationships: Jamie Benn/Tyler Seguin (background), Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 46
Kudos: 48





	1. When a Man Loves a Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! There are some things in this story that I don't know a lot about, like going to war or getting wounded, so let me know if there's anything I need to change. There are some things in this story I do know a lot about, like being an addict and being a queer, so if you ever wanna talk about those things, by messages are always open <3 I think I've covered all the TW's necessary at the start of each chapter, but be aware, things do get heavy. Thanks in advance for reading!

_ May 1969 _

_ Cedar Lake High School, Indiana _

The school gym smelled like sweat and cigarettes. The squeaky-clean band the principal had picked looked like the Beatles had five years ago if the Beatles had all been slightly uglier than they were. The heat of a hundred teenagers was enough to curl your hair, no matter how long you spent greasing it in front of the bathroom mirror at home. When had Patrick’s date left the dance? He checked his watch. Close to an hour ago. 

And yet, here he still was. Standing pathetically on the wall, looking like a total square. Watching the one person in the world that he wanted to dance with disappear into a sea of satin and taffeta. 

Man, Prom sucked. 

Patrick thought about leaving. He’d been thinking about leaving since he got there. Since before then, really; he’d been dreading this night for weeks, months, maybe even his entire life. Or maybe just since the sixth grade, when he’d realized that other boys in junior high didn’t look at other boys in junior high like he did. Since he realized they never would.

He wanted to leave. He really did. He was  _ going  _ to leave, alright? But to leave he’d have to turn around, and to turn around would be to tear his eyes away from the center of the dance floor. He hadn’t been able to make it happen yet, but he was gonna get there. Really. Any minute now. 

He could totally turn around. But if you were watching Jonathan Toews, could you?

Moving on the waxy gym floor where he practiced running track in the summers, Jonny’s hair was a mess. His cheeks were ruddy and flushed and a sheen of sweat was visible in the low light. His tuxedo, a white dinner jacket with black pants, didn’t fit quite right over his legs. He was a terrible dancer. He was barely smiling, all focus, looking at his partner the same way he looked at adversaries on the ice. It shouldn’t have been attractive. 

But damnit, it was. It always was. 

Patrick had been going to school with the same group of kids since he was six--that is, until Jonny happened. A transplant from Winnipeg, Jonny had simply appeared the summer before senior year like a vision. He was dropped into their lives perfectly-formed, golden tan and softly, decidedly Canadian. And while it was absurd that  _ Jonathan Toews _ was what passed for exotic in Cedar Lake, Patrick had been forced to admit that there was something magnetic about him. About his voice that rumbled low and only veered into his accent when he was totally at ease. About the earnest, quiet determination with which he approached everything from Government class to lunch. About the firm set of his jaw that couldn’t offset the sweetness of his big, brown eyes. About his small smile that never seemed quite aware of how many eyes were drawn to it. 

But plenty of guys in school had cute smiles. Plenty had broad shoulders and wavy hair. But nobody wore them like Jonny did. It was the way he carried himself, Patrick had realized one day in the French class that Jonny was clearly too advanced for. As his mouth formed around a slur of words that none of the rest of them could make sound natural, giving a report on the environmental movement, Patrick had watched the ease with which Jonny moved through the world. And then he’d watched his deer-in-headlights look when everyone clapped and Jonny seemed to realize anyone might be watching that movement.

They seemed at odds, Jonny’s natural self-possession and his utter self-consciousness . But then it hit Patrick: Jonny just  _ cared.  _ He cared about everything. 

Well, everything but Patrick, maybe. He wasn’t even sure if Jonny knew his name.

“You know, sometimes when kids come to dances they try to, you know… Dance.” 

The voice brought Patrick suddenly back to the present, but he didn’t bother taking his eyes off Jonny. He didn’t have to look to know that the voice belonged to Mr. Sharp. Sharpy, who had somehow become his best friend in town, was an English teacher and apparent dance chaperone who was barely older than Patrick. He didn’t have much of an interest in teaching, it seemed, unless teaching included making up nicknames for students, occasionally ranting about Ginsberg, smoking with Patrick behind the school, and bragging about the Woodstock tickets he’d somehow procured for later that summer. 

Sharpy handed him a glass of punch and a lit cigarette. 

“You know, you really shouldn’t be hanging around smoking with students,” Patrick said, accepting the punch and taking a drag without breaking his concentration.

“You make it sound like I’m smoking pot or something, Jesus.” 

“Well, not currently,” Patrick said, finally shooting him a grin.

“You’ll have to graduate before that happens, Kaner.” Patrick snorted. Funny of Sharpy to pretend he had principles. “Really, though. What are you doing over here? Where’s your date?” 

“Date?” Patrick was still distracted. Jonny was doing this weird dance move that made his ass look amazing. 

“You did have one of those, right?”

“Yeah. She got out of here a while ago. Had to work in the morning.”

“Sure she did. And you stuck around to…” Patrick wasn’t listening when Sharpy took a deep drag on his cigarette, followed Patrick’s eyeline, shook his head, and muttered, “Jesus, Patrick. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

The song ended, and Patrick watched Jonny untangle himself from his date, sweaty and laughing, soundlessly saying something in her ear. Then the band started playing  _ When a Man Loves a Woman,  _ and she settled her arms around Jonny’s neck, and Patrick had to look away. 

He turned to Sharpy.

“Was that a  _ firm _ no on that pot?” 

***

Patrick would be lying if he said that he was having the best night of his life, even though that was what he would tell his parents later. He would be lying if he said he was even happy, that part of him wasn’t considering driving his car down to the lake and jumping in. And he would especially be lying if he told you that he wasn’t replaying over and over in his mind what it was like to watch Jonny dance with somebody else. 

His mind wasn’t where he said it was. But with that little bit of pot in his system, it was getting there. 

“Wait wait wait,” Patrick was saying through his laughter. “Bull _ shit  _ you met one of the Supremes.”

“No man, really. I mean, she  _ said  _ she was one of the Supremes--”

“You don’t know who the Supremes are?”

“Well, no--”

“Oh my  _ God. _ ”

They were passing the joint back and forth outside the emergency exit on the side of the school. Their smoke-hazy giggles were getting louder and louder, echoing around the quiet of the parking lot. They were a little less careful than they should’ve been, getting a little carried away--and that was how they missed the sound of the steps that should’ve warned them that the door was about to bang open.

“ _ Shit. _ ” 

Sharpy ducked for the bushes and Patrick had to stifle his laughter while he shooed the smoke away. 

Of course, that was until Patrick saw who was coming through the door. The person coming through the door was Jonny.

Patrick nearly choked. 

“Hey,” Jonny said, looking at Patrick with his actual eyes like it was no big deal. “Have you seen a girl go by here? Turquoise kind of dress? Satin?”

Oh. He was looking for his date. Of course. Shit, Patrick’s palms were sweating. He thought he could hear Sharpy laughing at him from around the corner. Rat bastard. 

“Uh, no. Haven’t seen anybody.” 

“Oh, thank God.” 

Jonny collapsed against the wall then, taking Patrick slightly aback when he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He took off his jacket, and when he undid his bowtie and exposed the base of his throat it was Patrick who found his breathing affected.

Jonny noticed Patrick staring and held out his pack of Pall Malls. 

“You want a light?”

“No, no. I’m alright.” He hesitated. “I’m just--surprised. I thought you were Mr. Athlete.” 

Jonny just shrugged. 

“Everyone needs air sometimes.” 

“Yeah,” Patrick said. “Funny sometimes how a little smoke makes it easier to breathe.” 

“Yeah, something like that.” 

Jonny was smiling. Patrick couldn’t believe he was talking--couldn’t believe he was fucking  _ high  _ talking--but Jonny was smiling and Patrick didn’t want him to leave so there he went. 

“So… are you avoiding your date, or…?” 

“Just, everything. Nothing against Molly, it's just…” 

“A lot,” Patrick filled in.

“It’s a lot.” 

The moon was heavy and full and seemed very unreal overhead. The bright white of it felt very far away, barely reaching Jonny’s face, drowned out by the copper color of the street lights. In that reddish half-light, Jonny almost made the spring night seem… warm. Like for once in his life there was no place, not even the cool, blank, distant horizon, that Patrick would rather be. 

“Hey,” Jonny pushed out a column of smoke and looked at Patrick with the full force of his attention, which was terrifying. “You’re the manager for the JV hockey team, right?”

Jonny was the star of the Varsity team. Nobody had cared about hockey before Jonny got to school.

“Yeah. I like the numbers.” 

Jonny nodded sagely. 

“I’ve seen you in Geometry. You’re a lot smarter than people give you credit for.” 

Patrick thought his heart was going to stop beating altogether. Was it just the pot, or had Jonny gotten closer to him? 

Then the door banged open again, and the moment was over. 

“Jonny! Oh, Taaaaa-zer!” It was TJ Oshie, football team captain and perennial sidekick of Jonny’s. He spotted them, coming to fling an arm around Jonny, who was looking at the ground. “Jonny, where ya been?” 

“Hey, Osh.”

TJ nodded and smiled at Patrick.

“Hey, it's Patrick, right?” 

“Yeah, TJ. We’ve been in the same class since we were eight.”

At least he was friendly.

“Anyway,” TJ said. “C’mon, Jon. We’re gonna shake a leg. You comin’?”

“I’m coming.” Jonny gave that small, polite smile that Patrick liked so well. “See you around, Patrick.”

“See you around.”

Sharpy returned as Jonny disappeared behind the door. 

“Oh, Kaner.” He put his arm around him. “You’re so fucked.” 

Patrick looked up at him, wide-eyed and terrified, realizing what Sharpy knew. How Sharpy knew what nobody knew.

“It’s okay, Patrick. I won’t tell anyone.” 

He wrapped Patrick into his arms as he cried into his chest, all of it coming down on him at once, a mess of fear and relief and confusion and desire--so, so much desire, and so much loneliness to go alongside it.

Just inside, dozens of couples made up of the kids Patrick had known his whole life were dancing under tinfoil stars. They had on suits and ties and were wearing dresses with elaborate hairdos. They were nervous, mostly, and a little sweaty and sitting on the brinks of their lives. They were gazing up or down at their dates, and they were trying to figure out how to kiss them. They all had that feeling, and they were all allowed to have it--that toe-tingling, face-flushing feeling--and Patrick wanted so badly what they had.

“It’s alright,” Sharpy said to him, knowing it wasn’t. “It’s alright.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! I really hope you enjoyed. I've worked harder on this fic than anything else I've written in a really long time, so please feel free to leave your thoughts. 
> 
> Also! Quick note on accuracy of place/etc... I have them in Cedar Lake, which is a real town about an hour outside of Chicago, because I wanted them to be near Chicago but also do all the 60's small-town stuff. That said, I'm also taking a few liberties with it, like the fact that they go to Cedar Lake High School, which doesn't exist, when in reality kids from Cedar Lake go to Lowell High School, near where I'm from. But that seemed too weird, lol. But I know a lot of Hawks fans obviously would know the area, so I just wanted to make that clear! It be that way sometimes. 
> 
> I also tried and am trying to balance 60's colloquialisms with the way our boys talk, so any inaccuracies are from trying to keep their voices alive. Also when I say this one will be a slow burn, I really mean it! Vietnam doesn't even show up until chapter 5... This is a long-haul kind of thing. I hope that's okay. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. I really hope you guys like it because this is a universe I already care about a lot!


	2. Stonewall Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer of 1969 passes in a haze of baseball bets, lunch shifts at the local diner, Beach Boys records, political upheaval, and of course, pining over Jonathan Toews.

_June 1969_

_Donna’s Diner, Cedar Lake, Indiana_

“Order up for table four!” Patrick called.

“Table four? Table five has been waiting for twenty minutes!”

“Well then maybe table five shouldn’t have ordered three B&G’s and six burgers, huh? Hash browns are going down now.”

“They better be!”

Patrick rolled his eyes and pushed up his sleeves as Jackie sidled up to the kitchen window. It was going to be a long-ass summer. 

“All-day breakfast is a bitch,” he said.

“Well, so are you, so you’d better get used to it,” Jacks answered.

He stuck his tongue out at her. She stuck hers back out at him. Patrick loved his cousin. She took the plates he handed her and floated away. 

Patrick had been living with Jackie and her parents since he was sent away from home at 14. At first he’d hated it--he’d loved Buffalo, and he had three sisters he was close to, and of course there was the reason he was sent away, which no one knew--but now Chicagoland was just home. He’d been working in his aunt’s diner since he was 15, and four years later, it was a pretty typical Summer Saturday: hot, sweaty, and with everyone up his ass. 

He heard the chimes above the door jangle, but he didn’t have time to think anything of it until Jacks came back up to the window. 

“Someone’s here to see you,” she said, smacking her gum. 

“Who? Sharpy?” It didn’t really make sense, but who else would want to talk to him?

“It’s _Jonathan Toews_. Since when did you become friends with the popular kids, Pat?” 

“Uh, I’m not.”

Patrick peeked out at the dining room. Jonny was sitting at the counter, flipping through a menu and looking so uncomfortable it was almost funny. He was still as pretty as ever, of course--shoulders bulging in his summer t-shirt, tan arms resting on a counter Patrick now wished he’d cleaned a little bit better. And here Patrick was, sweaty and greasy in his white t-shirt and apron--he smoothed his hair furiously, trying to make out his reflection in the silver of the grease hood. 

“Pat. I’m sure he doesn’t care what you look like.”

Patrick knew that, but she didn’t have to _remind_ him. 

He went out to the lunch counter, taking a deep breath and trying to convey some sense of the cool he totally didn’t have. Then Jonny looked up and smiled at him, and all hopes of coming off cool went out the window.

“Heard you asked for me?” 

“Might’ve,” Jonny answered smoothly. At least someone was calm. “Somehow I’ve lived in this town almost a whole year and I realized I’d never been here. Thought I’d get a professional opinion on what was good.”

“Oh? I’m honored.”

“But then I heard that you were the cook and I realized it's probably all terrible.”

Patrick laughed. Was Jonny being flirty with him? Must be a Canadian thing.

“Are you chirpin’ me, Toews? Look, I don’t know how they do things in _Canada--_ ” he said it like you’d say _the bottom of the ocean_ or _the worst place on Earth_ or _hell,_ “but here it's generally regarded as a bad idea to insult the guy who’s making your food.” 

“Oh, my bad. Guess I’ll have to get a hot dog somewhere else.”

“We eat things other than hot dogs!”

“Yeah, right. Like what?”

“Like look at the menu in front of you, dumbass.”

“Patrick!” a voice called. Patrick looked up, startled. His aunt was standing in the kitchen door, hands on hips, looking royally pissed. “What the hell? It's noon! We have a line wrapped around the building!”

“I’m going, Aunt Donna!” Patrick shouted back. They didn’t have a line wrapped around the building, but whatever. He smiled at Jonny again shyly. “I gotta go. Lunch rush or something.”

“Yeah, I get it. You just can’t stand my critiques of Chicago food.”

“Oh, and your Canadian cooking is so much better?” 

“I haven’t even _had_ your cooking yet and I know my _French Canadian_ cooking is better.”

“Oh, _excuse_ me. You’ll have to prove that one, Toews.”

“Maybe I will.” 

Jonny had this look in his eye, the same one he got on the ice. It was competitive, and intense, and teasing, and very attractive. 

“Patrick!” Aunt Donna shouted again. 

“I’m going!” he shouted back. “See ya around.” 

“See ya, Kaner.” 

Patrick worked the next hour in something of a daze. Usually he was able to lock it down and focus up, but by the time lunch rush was over he’d burnt three burgers, cooked all the over-easy eggs way past medium, and sent Italian beef to a table that had ordered Italian sausage. When his aunt told him to take the afternoon off, he didn’t argue. 

Jackie cornered him in the break room when he was grabbing his stuff to head home.

“So what’d he come to talk to you for?” she said, arms crossed. 

“He didn’t come just to talk to me. I’m sure he was just hungry.”

“He ordered a _shake._ Does he look like a guy that drinks milkshakes?” 

Patrick rolled his eyes.

“Everyone drinks milkshakes, Jacks.”  
  


“Well, he didn’t.”

And indeed, when Patrick looked out to Jonny’s empty seat, the shake was still full, cherry still sitting on top.

***

It was the first time Jonny showed up at the diner, but it wasn’t the last. From then on he was always showing up, making a general nuisance of himself and never really eating what he ordered. Unendingly polite, he was instantly a favorite of Patrick’s aunt and cousin, who asked about him any day he wasn’t in. Which was annoying as hell--but which also meant they let it slide when Patrick spent half a shift leaning over the counter talking to Jonny. If he came between rushes Patrick would take his break and sit with Jonny in his booth, shooting the shit and blowing straw wrappers and arguing over who was better at this or that. It was strange, almost, how quickly they became friends. It was like Jonny just showed up one day, decided that Patrick belonged to him in some small way, and that was that. And who was Patrick to argue? He felt like he’d hit the jackpot. Well, what would _really_ be hitting the jackpot was impossible. So he tried to be happy with all the luck he already had. 

“The Sox are going all the way this year, I’m telling you,” Jonny said. He was standing on a chair in the corner of the room, trying to fix the black and white TV they had mounted there. He’d become Mr. Fix It around the diner, just another reason for Patrick’s family to love him. 

“Bull. If anyone is going all the way this year, it's the Cubs,” Patrick responded through a mouthful of Jonny’s fries, content to admire Jonny’s ass from the booth. It was late June now, and they’d graduated last weekend. They’d become inseparable that quickly.

“You guys will get a pennant when _I_ become an American citizen,” Jonny said.

“You willing to put money on that?”

“I’ll do you one better. If you guys win the World Series, I’ll buy a Cubs jersey.”

“Oh, you are so gonna regret this. Done.” Patrick grinned as Jonny flicked through channels of static. “Speaking of the fall, what are you doing for college? You never talk about it. What, are you ashamed you didn’t get into Yale?”

“I’m still undecided, asshole. I’m between two schools.” The baseball game finally appeared on the screen. Of course Jonny could fix anything. 

“You still haven’t let them know?” Patrick couldn’t imagine. Although he guessed that when you were going to be the centerpiece of a school’s hockey program, they’d wait as long as you wanted.

“I have offers from IU and the University of North Dakota. I’d like to go to UND, they have a great hockey team, but…” Jonny shrugged, coming back to sit down in the booth. He looked out the window, frowning into the gold of the setting sun. The diner was pretty much empty this late, Jonny’s voice the only sound. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to go so far away.”

“Something worth sticking around Indiana for?” 

Patrick felt some of the old nervousness start to creep in. He and Jonny didn’t usually talk about serious things when they were flicking spoonfuls of milkshake at each other. 

“My _Maman,_ ” Jonny said. “She’s sick. That’s why we moved here in the first place, was to be closer to family, so she’d have support. But they really haven’t been any help, and I just want my little brother to get to be a kid, you know? Leaving… Just doesn’t feel right.”

“Well,” Patrick said slowly, moving to lighten the mood in spite of himself. “I’m going to IU this fall. So it's not _all_ bad if you do end up there.”

“Oh God, now I’ve _gotta_ go to UND.” Jonny grinned.

“Get bent, Tazer.”

They were laughing and messing around again when Patrick’s aunt came out of the kitchen. Jackie followed, flipping the _closed_ sign and sitting calmly on the counter.

“Jonathan, dear, will you turn it to the news?” Aunt Donna said tightly. 

Jonny turned it, the baseball game disappearing from the screen, and sat back down with Patrick. He felt the uneasiness infect him. It had been a mad couple of years anyway--the assassinations of the Kennedys and of Dr. King, the protests and unrest that felt so close in Chicago and yet so far away. What could be happening now? 

“Riots continue tonight in New York,” the anchor was saying, “They began at the site of illegal homosexual establishment The Stonewall Inn, but have spread through much of that area of the city. Gay men, lesbians and transvestites have been taking to the streets since late last night, causing destruction and mayhem in response to police raids.” 

“The queers are rioting?” Jackie said. 

“Holy shit,” Patrick breathed.

“Patrick! Language!” his aunt hissed.

“Sorry.”

The queers were rioting. 

“What is this country coming to?” Aunt Donna was shaking her head, wiping her hands on her apron.

_Its senses, maybe,_ Patrick thought. But he made himself squash the thought. He watched on the TV screen as people--people like him--made their presence felt in a city that didn’t want to see them there. He stole a glance over at Jonny, who was watching the screen open-mouthed. Patrick looked back down at the formica table top. People in New York were fighting for him. But sitting here with his small family, in their small diner in their smaller town, he wasn’t quite ready to let himself dare to believe that yet. 

***

Two weeks later and life hadn’t changed much, whether history was being written or not. Going to the record store with Sharpy was supposed to be a reprieve from thinking about Jonny, who was _everywhere_ these days--not that Patrick was complaining. But it got exhausting, wanting somebody so bad all the time. Dreaming about them. Hoping they’d choose IU, picturing them going to school together. He’d hoped Sharpy would consider the record store sacred ground and eschew his usual nosiness, but he had no such luck.

“So you guys are just like, what? Best friends now?” 

“Aww, Sharpy, are you jealous?” 

“Course not, Kaner, I know there’s plenty of you to go around.” Sharpy pulled out a copy of _Rubber Soul_ and showed it to Patrick, who was in the next aisle over. “Is this worth the price?”

“No. And don’t you already have a copy?”

“What’s your point?” Patrick refused to dignify that with a response so Sharpy moved on. “So you guys just hang out, like, every day.” Patrick nodded. “And you’re cool with this?” 

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know, maybe because you’re like, in love with him?”

“Say it a little louder, I don’t think the Westboro Baptist Church heard you.” 

“How about this one?” Sharpy held up another record, this time a Doors album. 

“Maybe if you hate your ears.” 

“So judgemental. If you hate it, I’m definitely getting it. I mean, considering your taste is Jonathan Toews…” 

Patrick elbowed him as they went up to the register, but it didn’t have any heat to it. He would never admit it, but it was nice to have a friend he could talk to, even if that friend was as obnoxious as Patrick Sharp.

***

_Did_ he really like Jonathan Toews? Sometimes Patrick wasn’t so sure. Actually, scratch that. Sometimes he was extremely sure that he didn’t. 

“God, you are so _annoying,_ ” Jonny said, squinting at him through his sunglasses.

“Says the guy who made us listen to Neil Young on the way here.”

“You’re just mad that Canada has already produced the best artist of the decade.” 

“Do you hear yourself when you talk? Serious question.”

They were at the Indiana Dunes, spending the day at the beach. The afternoon had grown long and late and waterlogged. Lake Michigan stretched so far that you really could believe that it was the ocean if you convinced yourself that the skyline in the distance wasn’t Chicago but Miami, or Havana, or pick your poison. They’d snuck a few beers with them, and the sun was making quick work of the lake water left on Patrick’s back. He was stretched out on his stomach with his eyes closed, because if he just focused on the sound of his voice he could stay irritated and forget that Jonny looked like a Greek god.

“Your back is burning,” Jonny said.

“So?” The beer was just starting to run its course in Patrick’s veins, and he was _not_ about to get up.

“You need sunscreen.” Patrick just _hmphed_ into his arms. Jonny sighed and Patrick heard him grab the tube of lotion. “I got it. Or are you going to be a shit about that, too?”

Patrick just flipped Jonny off, not bothering to open his eyes, until he felt Jonny’s legs settle behind him. He suddenly flushed, heartbeat stuttering when he felt Jonny sit himself against Patrick’s ass. _Oh._ He was situated right behind it, strong legs straddling him, bracketing him in the sand. Patrick almost thought he could feel, just barely pressing into him--but there was no way. _Shit._ He was suddenly very awake. And very grateful that he was pressed into the sand. Was this really happening?

He was drawn back to reality when he felt the cold sunscreen drop onto his back. A pair of hands followed, calluses lurking beneath the soft skin, soothing the lotion into his back gently but commandingly. The skin was smooth but the hands were determined, digging into the muscle now, massaging his shoulders, just coming up to the edge of painful. Patrick had to bite his lip to keep from groaning, which would really give him away, but he knew Jonny could feel how tense he was. He knew because Jonny wouldn’t stop working away at him, wouldn’t back away from the challenge of Patrick’s body, pulling him apart until he had basically melted into the sand. He could definitely feel it now, Jonny’s dick bumping up against his ass every time he kneaded Patrick’s back. Patrick had never felt so tense or so relaxed at the same time--like gasoline, he was slow and liquid and yet ready to ignite.

He wanted nothing more than to relieve that pressure, for Jonny to move his hands lower and give every part of him this same gorgeous attention until they’d both been swallowed up by that blue flame. But then Jonny leaned down and said in Patrick’s ear,

“Go to sleep, Peeks. You won’t burn now.”

When Patrick woke up, the tide had nearly come up to meet him. The sky was turning a faint purple, and Jonny was a hundred yards down the beach, playing volleyball in the sand with some girls.

***

Jackie was already working on closing up the diner when Patrick and Jonny showed up. Late on a Friday night, they’d just been on a double date at the drive-in, suggesting afterwards that they get a bite at the diner. Their dates had promptly rejected them, very politely stating that they would rather do anything else than spend another minute in their company.

“Go home,” Jackie said, “we’re closed.”

“C’mon, Jacks. One shake?”

“I already cleaned out the shake machine tonight, Pat.”

“Fine. Just a soda then.”

“ _Fine._ ”

“Hi Jonathan, Patrick,” Aunt Donna walked in. “Where are your dates?”

“I don’t think they’re going to work out, Mrs. K,” Jonny said bashfully.

“What, did they get tired of you two only talking to each other?” Jacks said.

“No!” Patrick said indignantly. _Yes._

“What a shame. Well,” Aunt Donna said, “we’re going home for the night. You boys just lock up when you’re done, alright? Patrick, don’t burn the place down.”

“No promises, Mrs. K,” said Jonny. 

Jackie and Aunt Donna left then, turning off the dining room lights to make it clear they were closed. Jonny and Patrick stood together in the dim kitchen, eating donuts and sipping their Cokes.

“We were good dates. Right?” Patrick said. 

“Absolutely. I mean, what did they want us to do? Offer to slow dance with them?” Jonny looked unfazed. Patrick snorted.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have my first slow dance at the drive-in.”

“Yeah right, your first slow dance.” Jonny looked at him, mouth dropping when he realized Patrick wasn’t kidding. “Wait, really? You’ve never slow danced with anybody?”

“Thanks for reminding me, Captain Asshole.” Patrick blushed. Like he needed a reminder of all Jonny’s experience. 

“Well for Chrissake, I’ll show you.”

“You? The guy whose hockey stance is basically ‘don’t move my body for the two minute shift except to shoot’?”

“You were watching my stance during games?” Jonny had such a smug look on his face that Patrick was tempted to kiss it off of him. “C’mon. It’ll be fun.”

Jonny held out a hand. Patrick finally sighed dramatically and took it, putting down his drink and following Jonny to the jukebox. Jonny put in a quarter and flipped around for the song he was looking for. He did it all with his left hand, never dropping Patrick’s from his right. 

Finally the music started and they went out into the middle of the dark lobby floor. Just like the night they’d first talked at Prom, Jonny’s face was illuminated just by the cocktail of moonlight and street lights leaking in from the windows. He placed a hand on Patrick’s hip as the voice of Elvis filled the restaurant. 

“You’re so predictable,” Patrick said, heart pounding, because if he didn’t move his mouth he knew he would put it on Jonny’s. 

“Shut up and move your hips, Peeks.”

The nickname was like a balm, and Patrick quieted as they began to move in the dark. He couldn’t help but remember the beach, remember the confident way Jonny touched him then, the same way he was leading him now. It wasn’t flashy or insisting, just quietly authoritative, as though he had decided what was best for both of them, and you just had to trust him because he was right. He was always right, and Patrick knew he would follow him anywhere, would follow him into battle if the situation demanded it. Because even if Jonny never loved him back, he would take care of him, and that was better than any life Patrick could have without him.

“Come to Dallas with me,” Jonny whispered.

“What?” Patrick looked up. Jonny was looking at him with eyes like honey, face hovering closer than it should’ve. If he was out of his mind, he would almost say Jonny was dancing with him for real. 

“I’ve got a cousin down in Dallas. I need to pick up some stuff from him, some old family stuff. I’m driving down in a couple weeks. We’ll make a trip of it.”

“I--I have to work.”

“So take off.”

“You want my aunt to hate you?”

“Your family would love me even if I was in San Quentin.”

“I don’t know,” Patrick said nervously. Dallas felt… Well, so far away it seemed impossible. Jonny didn’t seem concerned though. He just pulled Patrick in a little tighter, a touch so light it would’ve been imperceptible if every nerve in your body wasn’t attuned to it.

“Patrick. Don’t think about it. Just come with me.” 

If Jonny said Dallas was possible, he guessed Dallas was possible. He thought back to the week before, when they’d watched the moon landing together. Patrick hadn’t believed it would actually happen, hadn’t wanted to watch at all, but Jonny had insisted they witness history together. And he’d been right. And if Jonny had been right about the moon, what was Texas?

Patrick put his head down to Jonny’s chest and closed his eyes.

“Okay, Jon. We’ll go to Dallas. Whatever you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my novel guys <3


	3. Under the Dallas Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonny and Patrick take a road trip to Dallas, where Patrick meets a pair of very adorable cowboys named Jamie and Tyler who give him advice on love, life, and all the things that are bigger in Texas.
> 
> ***TRIGGER WARNING*** This chapter includes people commenting their desire to hurt gay people. This is a serious and painful topic, but I think it's important. It also includes period-typical homophobic language. If these are uncomfortable or painful for you, I recommend skipping to the end of the chapter or the next one.
> 
> Much love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I really do think I'm funny with the title. 
> 
> Also, you have to listen to "Southern Nights" by Glen Campbell while you read this, if you read this. Them's just the rules.

_ August 1969 _

_ Somewhere along Interstate 57 _

It was supposed to be a four-day trip. 

Two days there, two days back. With a little elbow grease and a lot of coffee, eight hours of driving a day would be easy between the two of them. Just a little four-day trip.

In the end, they would take almost a week to get there, and three days to get back, and by the time they got home Patrick would have to leave for IU the next day. Ten days total. Up until that point they all ranked in the top ten days of Patrick’s life, and they would for a very long time.

***

Of course, it wasn’t like it was time wasted. For Patrick, the trip was educational.

He learned that when you sped past open fields in the middle of the night, the fireflies in them looked like sparks of static on a bed sheet.

He learned that cicadas mostly sounded the same everywhere, but that when your mind was quiet they were even  _ louder.  _

He learned what heat lightning looked like when you were laying on your back in the grass, spidering across the open sky with nothing to block the view. He learned the difference between Country and Western music, and what a Blue Plate Special was, and what the breezes of the plains sounded like pushed through the mesh sieve of a motel window screen. He learned that days could be stretched if they needed to, and when they needed to, and that excuses to family sounded a lot more convincing from the end of a payphone three states away.

But more than anything, he learned about Jonny. He learned what Jonny ordered in roadside diners for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He learned how he took his coffee (black). He learned that Jonny knew all the words to “Southern Nights” by Glen Campbell and would sing it loudly, unabashedly,  _ every _ time it came on the radio, no matter how many times it came on the radio. He found out how it felt to sleep in the same room as him. How it was better and more infuriating and soothing than he’d ever expect. He became intimately familiar with the dance of their push-and-pull, perfected it over arguments about TV channels and who got to shower first. He learned that Jonny was grumpy in the morning but soft at night and that he drove him crazy about all of the hours in between. And he learned that without a doubt,  _ that _ was where he wanted to spend his life. He wanted all those hours in between.

***

It was just after sundown when Patrick asked it. They’d stopped too many times during the day, taking an extended lunch in Jonesboro, and their next motel in Little Rock was still an hour away. The moon was already up, the stars announcing their existence one at a time. Patrick was fiddling with the radio, trying to keep talking, to keep them both awake after a pleasantly exhausting day.

“So,” he said, “you’ve definitely decided on IU, right? I mean, even  _ you  _ can’t still be undecided. I’m just looking forward to seeing you all Ivy-League this fall. You’ll join a fraternity and they’ll probably just make you president on the spot.” He grinned at Jonny, trying to play like the question was off-the-cuff and not something he thought about all the fucking time.

“I rejected them both. I’m not going.”

Patrick stopped fiddling. That wasn’t the way Jonny was supposed to respond.

“Wait, what do you mean you’re not going?”

“I can’t. Maman needs my help and she can’t afford anyone else.”

“You’re kidding, right? What about what’s going to happen to her when you go overseas and  _ die _ ?” 

Jonny turned up the radio. 

“Can we table it? I love this song.”

Patrick turned it off.

“No, you don’t. You hate Hank Williams.”

“He’s just so  _ American, _ ” Jonny whispered distractedly, like that was what mattered right now. 

“You know if you don’t go and they do a lottery, they’re going to draft you.”

“They’re not going to do a lottery.”

All of Patrick’s visions of the upcoming semester--trading science notes, barging into each other’s dorms, football and hockey games, maybe someday even being roommates--were slipping away. It was like he could see Jonny in his head, taking off the red college sweater and putting on green fatigues. And then having them turn red again.

“Jon, I know you think that because you’re from Canada you can’t be--”

“Shit,” Jonny cut him off. For half a second Patrick thought he might be coming around to his point of view, but then Jonny suddenly pulled the truck off the road and parked in the middle of the field next to them.

“What are you doing?” 

But Jonny was unbuckling his seatbelt, grinning over at him. What the hell did he have to be smiling about? Did he not get that they were having a discussion about how Jonny was going to  _ die?  _

“I almost forgot. Meteor shower’s tonight.”

“What?”

Jonny got out, grabbing a blanket from the truck bed before coming around to get Patrick’s door. 

“C’mon. We’re gonna miss it.”

Patrick dumbly thought that he was pretty sure that wasn’t how like, astronomy worked, but he followed Jonny out to where he was laying out the blanket. 

“So we’re just not going to talk about you throwing your life away in the most literal sense?” 

But it was like Jonny couldn’t hear him, stretched out on the ground, thick arms flexing as he folded them behind his head. He was looking up at the sky with those eyes that shone even in the dark, and he hesitated a moment before using them on Patrick.

“Just c’mere, will you? I’ve never missed a meteor shower before.”

Patrick stopped. Usually Jonny just took what he wanted. He had never heard him…  _ plead  _ before. 

Maybe Jonny knew he was going to get drafted. Maybe he was scared. He always seemed so much older, but he was just nineteen, after all. Maybe he just wanted this one small thing. 

So Patrick laid down next to him. He stretched out too, settling himself next to Jonny before he felt one of those strong arms come around him and pull his head onto Jonny’s chest. Patrick’s eyes widened, and suddenly he was intimately aware of every inch of his body--every inch that was now running alongside Jonny’s, jeans next to jeans, fingers in his hair, just a thin cotton t-shirt separating him from the skin of Jonny’s chest. From the sound of Jonny’s heart, which was actually pounding just as hard as his was. 

As Jonny’s heartbeat started to settle, so, reluctantly, did Patrick. When was he going to get a chance like this again? This might be the closest thing to love he saw in his lifetime. And now, after what Jonny had said… Well, who knew what was going to happen? So he set about relaxing every white knuckle-impulse inside of himself. He puddled slowly into Jonny, inhaled his clean and minty scent; he felt the night breeze hit his back from across the prairie and tried to focus on the gentle touch of Jonny’s fingers tangling and untangling themselves in his hair. He even let himself put a hand on Jonny’s stomach, just happening to land where his shirt had ridden up, just happening to feel how warm and soft the skin was there. 

“Peeks,” Jonny pointed up at the first meteor streaking across the sky. “Did you catch it?”

“Yeah, Jon. I did.” 

***

The sun was so bright that Patrick almost missed the pack Jonny tossed at him.

“They didn’t have Marlboros.” 

“What? How do they not have Marlboros?”

“I dunno, but they didn’t, so I got you Virginia Slims. Does that work for Your Highness?”

Patrick grinned, pulling one out to light up.

“I  _ guess.  _ If it  _ must. _ ”

It was a day later and Patrick was still riding high. He was leaning up against the truck, soaking in the afternoon sun while they filled up on gas. He looked more at ease than he ever had before, healthier, more vibrant and not so young. His hair was starting to get long, his curls just riding the edge of untameable, and his skin was actually getting tan, believe it or not. Not like,  _ Jonny  _ tan but still. They were very nearly to Dallas by now, and the sky was utterly cloudless, so bright it hurt your eyes even with sunglasses. 

“You ready?” Jonny asked. When Patrick didn’t answer, Jonny stopped, exasperated. “What? What is it?”

“I… think I’m gonna double check that they don’t have Marlboros.”

“Oh my  _ God, _ ” Jonny said, but you could practically hear his eyes rolling fondly.

He ran back into the gas station, ready to be on their way. Third in line, he was scanning the rows of cigarettes behind the counter when he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of the two men behind him.

“I think we’re getting close to it, right?”

“Nuh-uh. And they’re lucky, too. If I went past that queer bar and saw anybody in it, I think I’d go in and kill someone.”

“Bull _ shit. _ ”

Patrick’s heart nearly stopped beating. 

“No, really! I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself--”

“Then maybe  _ you’re  _ the one who’s lucky, jailbird.”

There… there was a gay bar outside of Dallas?

“Well, we’re not close to it anyway. I think it’s right off the exit towards 66, by Caddo Mills.”

Suddenly he was first in line, and the cashier cut in.

“What can I do for you?”

“Uh--” it was like he’d forgotten how to speak. “Just a pack of Virginia Slims.”

Patrick paid for his cigarettes and went back out into the car. His mind was racing and blank, all at once, like it was just spinning its wheels. There was a gay bar in Dallas? Where he was virtually guaranteed nobody would know him? And it was basically on the way, like the universe had just presented it to him?

Patrick had spent his whole life scared. He’d spent his whole life accepting that he would be alone. But if the past few weeks had taught him anything, it was that maybe he didn’t have to be.

If he didn’t go now, he knew he never would.

And if he never did, he might as well stop living now.

And that meant… He had to tell Jonny.

When Patrick got back into the truck, his heart was so loud that he didn’t hear Jonny starting the engine, or pulling away from the gas station, or talking to him at all.

“Peeks? You okay?”

“What?”

“Did someone try to mug you in there or something?” Jonny tried to smile but he couldn’t get the concern off his face. “You look like the gas station contained all the secrets of the universe.” 

“Maybe it did,” Patrick murmured. Now Jonny was really looking at him like he was crazy. 

“Patrick, what happened in there? You’re kinda scarin’ me.”

“Jonny…” Oh God. It was now or never. “I think you should pull over.” 

He did. He turned to face Patrick, giving him the full attention of those, earnest, couldn’t-hide-if-he-tried eyes. Those eyes which were so sweet, and which had become so familiar in such a short time. In a moment there was a good chance they’d never look at him the same way again, and Patrick thought vaguely that he might puke. He had to look down. He’d never get anywhere looking at those eyes.

“When I was in line, I heard some guys talking.” 

“Did they say something to you? Because Patrick, I’ll go back in there--”

“No, no. Not like that. But they did… They were talking about something that does concern me.” Shit, this wasn’t coming out right, and it was just freaking Jonny out more, and now he was panicking, and he had to just fucking say it. “They were talking about going to rough up people at a gay bar. One that apparently is right outside Dallas. They said it was by Route 66 and Caddo Mills.”

“And this concerns you because…” 

Jesus, he was really going to make him say it? Fine, he’d fucking say it. He’d go for broke. 

“Because I’m gay. But… But I think you already knew that.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” Jonny’s voice was barely over a low rumble.

“Oh.” It didn’t seem like Jonny was going to say anything after that. “Well… I want to go. To the bar. Tonight.” 

There was a silence so long that Patrick had to steal a look over at Jonny to make sure he was still there. He was staring out the windshield, mouth set in a tight line. 

“No.” 

His stomach dropped.

“What?” 

“We’re not going.”

“What do you mean, we’re not going? What are you talking about? You… You think that’s just your decision to make?” 

He was gearing up for an argument that Jonny clearly wasn’t going to have, to hurl curses at someone who wouldn’t hear them. Hot shame and hurt and anger roiled together like an ocean in Patrick’s stomach, twisting until it seemed like it would suck Patrick down with it. He had to clench his jaw not to let his eyes get wet. Meanwhile Jonny put the car back in gear, checked the mirror, and started driving again.

“If you want to go then that’s up to you. But I can’t… I won’t watch you do it.”

The case was clearly closed.

At least Patrick never had to see how the look in those eyes had changed, since it seemed Jonny might never look at him again.

“I’m going. You can just drop me off on the way back from your cousin’s.”

“Fine.”

Patrick saw the last three months flash before his eyes, the last memories of some part of him that was dying. He’d let himself get his hopes up--he’d always known that was a mistake. It was too much to entertain some hope that Jonny would reciprocate. But even when he’d run scenarios in his head, or when they’d run on their own at night when he couldn’t sleep, nothing had come up like this.

Dallas in August was hotter than hell. But in that truck Patrick could have sworn it froze over. 

***

Jonny got the old family portraits and furniture from his cousin, dumped them in the back of the truck, didn’t stay for the pie he was offered. Patrick didn’t get out of the car. If he got out, he’d run now, and he’d never get back in. 

By the time ten rolled around and they were going down the exit towards the bar, Patrick would’ve bolted even if the bar had never materialized. With all the hopes and expectations that had vanished that day, it would seem appropriate enough if it never did.

But like any miraculous thing, it did, somehow, appear. It arrived on the horizon compact but bright, all green lights flashing in the dead of night. Even as small as it was, even with Jonny silent beside him, it looked like some kind of Emerald City, and Patrick gave into wonder in spite of himself. 

“I’ll be back around two,” Jonny said. Patrick got out and Jonny skidded out of the lot, leaving twin tracks of rubber on the ground.

Well, seemed like that was Patrick’s cue. He went inside.

The bar seemed even tinier on the inside, however that was possible. It looked like a regular Western dive bar for the most part, with cracked leather stools and shadowy lighting and stacked rows of old beer cans. The big difference was that the singer standing behind the microphone crooning Patsy Cline songs about losing your man was… Well, a man. 

Fans whirred softly from the ceiling, behind the bar, all the corners, creating the only sense of cool Patrick had felt since he got to Texas. It put him at ease somehow. At least, as much as he could be after driving hours in a truck where all the air had been sucked out. At least, as much as he could be in a place that was sort of like visiting your birth country when you’d been raised an ocean away, a place that was filled with family you’d never met. 

He sat down in front of the bartender.

“Whiskey or beer?” 

“Whiskey.” He had to clear his throat to answer. 

“Rocks or none?”

“Rocks.”

The bartender poured.

“A man after my own heart,” a voice came from down the bar. Patrick looked over to see a pair of young, flannel-clad cowboys smiling over at him. They both had dark beards and single earrings. The smaller one was holding his drink out toward him like a toast. “That’s exactly what I ordered.”

“Segs,” the bigger one said, “that’s what everybody orders. There’s only two options.”

“Not true! We both got rocks.”

The bigger one just smiled fondly and sighed. 

“You’re right, Segs. You both did get rocks.” He turned toward Patrick. “Sorry. He’s already a little drunk.”

“Bullshit, am not.” Segs turned to Patrick as well. “Jamie just thinks that being friendly must mean that I’m intoxicated, because he’s no fun.”

“Hi,” Jamie said. “I’m Jamie. I’m no fun.”

“Patrick,” Patrick said, grinning and holding out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Jamie.”

“I’m Tyler,” the other one cut in. “You can call me Segs, though.”

“Hi, Segs.”

“That’s not an accent from around here,” Segs said curiously, even though he didn’t have any Southern drawl either. He and Jamie picked up to move next to him, and they were so nice they could almost make Patrick forget about--everything. “Where are you from?”

“Buffalo originally. By way of Chicago. In town on a road trip.”

“Come to visit the gay capital of America?”

Patrick snorted.

“Sure, something like that.”

Segs winked suggestively, lifting his shirt to wipe off his face and show off a stunning set of abs. 

“You’ve come to the right place, then. You know what they say about Texas, right?” 

“He’s  _ definitely  _ drunk already _ , _ ” Jamie sing-songed in Patrick’s ear. 

“I’m not drunk yet! But I should be. Bartender!” Segs called. “Another round for us and Buffalo.”

***

Jamie and Segs were two of the most fun people Patrick had ever met. 

A pair of literal cowboys, they’d been teammates on the rodeo circuit since they’d met at a competition years ago. Tyler had all but boozed his way out of Boston where he’d been living, and so Jamie had invited him to stay and they’d been living together in Dallas ever since. 

As it turned out, there was a little bit of truth to what they said about Texas--not what Tyler had suggested, necessarily--just that everything was so much  _ more _ . Particularly the way the liquor flowed. They took a shot for each time someone gave them the once-over. They took a shot every time they gave someone the once-over back. Although, they had to let go of trying to keep track with Tyler, or else the bartender would have never stopped pouring. 

They took some shots for their former selves, too. They took one for every time as kids they’d told themselves that it was  _ just Brad/Sam/Tommy/whatever boy it had been that they weren’t  _ really  _ in love with, just close to.  _ It felt good to laugh about it now, to talk with other guys and acknowledge that yeah, it had been ridiculous. It had been unreasonable to fight what was so obviously in front of him and had been for so many years. It was absurd, really, and with a beer in hand and good company hovering so close he could smell their aftershave, what was absurd was funny. It was fun to talk about guys’ asses, to debate the attractiveness of movie stars, to see Jamie almost shoot beer out his nose laughing about Seggy’s sexual misadventures. It was fun to feel like a secret club, even if the secret was probably going to one day kill you. 

It was fun to not be alone. 

They took a shot for each of their respective fathers who had kicked them out. From the stories he told, Seggs seemed determined to take a shot for every bruise he’d gotten from his father, too. But he’d temper each with more beer, and a beer for him meant a beer for Patrick and pretty soon it didn’t seem like it mattered much at all.

Eventually Seggs had to run off to the bathroom, and Patrick and Jamie were left alone. 

“So…” Patrick started.

“So.” Jamie just smiled knowingly.

“So… What’s the story with you two?” 

“There is no story.” Jamie shook his head. “If you’re wondering if you should, with Tyler, you should. I know he thinks you’re a total dreamboat.” Patrick knew he was ribbing him now but he blushed anyway.

“Nah, man. I could never.”

“Really! I mean it. There’s nothing to see here. You dig?”

“I dig.” 

“In fact--” Jamie looked over his shoulder at a skinny blonde guy standing on the wall, “I think that gentleman over there is in need of a drink. It was nice to meet you, Buffalo.”

“Nice to meet you, Jamie.”

“And hey.” Patrick looked up at him. Jamie had the biggest, kindest eyes. “You stay safe out there, okay?” 

Patrick nodded. Even though he’d only known him a handful of hours, he felt that he’d shared a real part of himself with Jamie, and that it mattered somehow. It filled the cup of some part of him that he hadn’t known was thirsty. 

After a minute Tyler reappeared, bubbly and bouncing up to Patrick.

“Hey! Where’s Jamie?” 

Patrick just nodded towards the floor, watching Tyler’s smile falter and his eyes grow dim as he caught sight of Jamie and the other man.  _ Oh,  _ thought Patrick.  _ Jamie is his Jonny.  _

“Hey, more whiskey for us, right?” Tyler said. “Bartender!” 

***

Patrick wasn’t sure how long it had been. They were on the dance floor, one of the last couples still there. It was hard not to think about the last time he’d danced with anybody, there with Jonny in the dark of the diner, but then Segs had handed him another drink and it was easy. The cowboy up front was quietly singing Skeeter Davis’ “The End of the World.” At some point Tyler had given Patrick his shirt, though he couldn’t remember why now, so Tyler was dancing in just his white undershirt. They both leaned all their weight on each other like an A-frame house that seemed destined to collapse. Patrick felt as heavy as lead, like his cowboy boots were filled with concrete. Wait, no. He wasn’t wearing boots. Tyler was. Why was Tyler wearing anything? Although that felt like it might be short-lived, too.

“I love this place,” Patrick said.

“It’s alright, right? Totally worth driving ten miles past nowhere. And it was definitely worth it tonight to meet you.”

“Totally.” Patrick bit down on his tongue. “So… how do you know it's safe? That nobody’s going to come in and find you?”

“You don’t.” Segs sounded suddenly grim. “People will tell you it's the rodeos, the oil rigs, the drag races. But I promise you, you’re spending the night in the most dangerous place in Texas.” 

Patrick was quiet a moment. 

“So why stay?”

Patrick tried to pull away enough to look at him, but Segs’ capable hands wouldn’t stray far enough from his back to let him. He could feel his head turn towards Jamie, though. Felt him swallow hard and shrug softly. 

“I guess I’m just a hell of a team player. The rodeo, y’know.” 

His voice was more hoarse than it should be for someone who had been quenching his thirst for the better part of three hours. Maybe it was contagious; Patrick found that he couldn’t breathe either. Suddenly Tyler stopped moving, and Patrick looked up--and then the tension was culminating, and one of Tyler’s wide hands was gripping his jaw, tipping it gently but confidently towards his. Their faces were so close that Patrick could feel the stubble, the scruff, the ragged edges that told him he was in the arms of a man. That he was doing what he thought would stay in the daydreams he only allowed himself to dream in the moments he was staring at his ceiling at night. He was closing his eyes in spite of himself, and then it just happened, and their lips were touching. He was kissing a man. This gorgeous stranger, this city-transplant-closet-cowboy was his first kiss and he was happy about it. Well, his first kiss that mattered. His first kiss that turned his knees to jelly. Fucking hell. Or was that just what it was like trying to balance on the waves of whisky? Either way, he didn’t want it to stop--but it had to. Because it was all coming back up.

“‘Scuse me,” he said, and made a beeline for the bathroom. How romantic.

Fifteen minutes later he was sitting out on the curb. His head was in his hands, Tyler was rubbing his back and occasionally feeding him drags of a cigarette. The night air was as oppressive as ever, but occasionally a breeze would stir the dirt and make it bearable. Tyler was murmuring things both comforting and filthy when Jonny pulled up in the truck. 

“Shit.” 

“That the boyfriend?”

Patrick just looked at him. 

“Seggy--”

“Hey.” He put a finger on Patrick’s lips, still flushed from their kiss. “It’s alright. I know about the boyfriend. The boyfriend-not-boyfriend. Believe me, I know.” He smiled that toothy smile. “It was fun.”

“It was.” 

Jonny got out of the truck. He looked royally hacked off, but Patrick wasn’t looking at him. He and Tyler got up, and as soon as they were standing Tyler pulled him into a kiss infinitely dirtier than the one they’d shared earlier, tonguing Patrick back to dizziness. He wrapped him in a tight hug after, leaning in and whispering in his ear, “Boyfriend or not, can’t hurt to make him jealous, right?”

He released Patrick then, heading back towards the bar. 

“Your shirt,” Patrick said feebly.

“Keep it, Buffalo.” He waved in Jonny’s direction. “Night, boys.” 

Jonny got in without so much as a wave back. 

Patrick was still drunk enough when he got in the truck that the cool of the window on his forehead was enough to distract him from the heat of Jonny’s fuming. Jonny’s driving was steady even if he wasn’t, and the least until they got to the glowing sign of their motel… Only to keep driving on past it.

“Wasn’t that our motel?” Patrick asked.

“Maybe I wanna get back to Chicago tonight. Maybe I don’t know how much longer I can be in this car with you.” 

Patrick’s stomach twisted as though he’d been punched.

“If it really  _ pains you  _ that much,” he shot back, using all the dredges of his liquid courage, “You can let me out now and I’ll hitchhike back. But I promise, Jon, being a queer isn’t contagious.” 

Jonny stopped the car, lurching them both in their seats. 

“You think that’s what this is about? That I’m mad that you’re gay?” 

“Well, its not like you threw me a fucking parade.”

“Jesus, Patrick, no!” Patrick didn’t think that Jonny could get angrier, but he always had been able to surprise him. “What if they’d hurt you? Those guys you heard talking about this bar--they were talking about it because they wanted to  _ kill  _ the people inside. And you thought, yeah, that’s where I wanna be? And for what? To kiss--” He was cracking now. Jonny was jealous? And he was scared of Patrick getting hurt? “To kiss  _ him? _ ”

“No… I just wanted…”

“You just wanted to live in a world where you get to be normal. Where you don’t have to be alone. Where you can just have one night where you can have fun and not worry. I know what you wanted.” He did? “But that’s not how things work for people like us, Patrick! We don’t get to be not alone! We don’t get to feel normal and safe and we don’t get to let up for a second, not ever! Not ever!”

Oh my God, Jonny was crying. His face was ugly red and angry tears were sliding down it, all splotchy and frustrated. He wouldn’t look up from the steering wheel. Patrick thought he still hadn’t looked at him since that afternoon. But he just cleared his throat.

“People like us?”

And then Jonny was staring at him, had grabbed his face and was kissing him. 

It was urgent, and it was good. It was so much better than Tyler; good not just because it was somebody, but because it was Jonny, and kissing him wasn’t so much like searching for perfection but being informed precisely what perfection was, having the knowledge dropped gently and fervently in his lap. 

And just as quickly as it had started, Jonny collapsed against him, curling around him to sob into his neck. He was like a child who’d just lost a parent, like a child who couldn’t hide anymore and who’d become an adult very suddenly. 

“Shh. Shh,” he hushed him, just like Sharpy had done for him. “It’s okay, Jonny. I love you, and we’re gonna be okay. Shh.” 

***

They stayed up until the day before Patrick had to leave for IU. Two days they stayed in a motel room in Dallas, just talking and holding each other and spinning the records they’d bought in shops along the trip. Once Jonny had gone out alone, and had come back with wine and takeout dumplings. It was all they ate for two days, and they never noticed. 

They crammed a return trip that had taken them seven days to complete the first time into one twenty-four hour span. It required pretty much a straight stream of black coffee and an unending supply of cigarettes, but they did it. When Patrick got home, he collapsed on the bed and slept until his aunt woke him the next morning.

It was time to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my favorite chapter to write and it was basically finished before anything else in this fic. I unexpectedly loved writing Jamie and Tyler and cannot believe there isn't more fic of them as sad gay cowboys, unless there is, in which case please send those recs!
> 
> I know this fic is long as hell, and that it's not really a typical fanwork, and that it's not very satisfying, and that it big harps on the 60s gay angst. So for anyone who has actually read this far, I really, really want to thank you for going on this fuckin' journey with me. If you can, I would really appreciate any comments just so I know if anyone is still here!
> 
> Thank you again. You are all absolutely lovely.


	4. These Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick's first semester at IU has it's ups and downs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Edit from the future. I went back and split this chapter into two. So if you've been here for a while and you're confused, that's what's up! I didn't cut hardly anything, but this chapter was just too long and I think it turned into this big kinda roadblock in the middle, so I just split it up. If you're new here, don't worry about it and thanks for reading!!

_ September 1969 _

_ Bloomington, Indiana _

It wasn’t quite a hotel penthouse in Chicago, but Patrick guessed it would do. 

Tacked to the corkboard: an old black and white picture of his grandpa; polaroids of himself with Jackie and her parents at the diner; a candid of him bugging Sharpy in class; and a decidedly not-gay shot of himself and Jonny leaning up against his truck, not touching, somewhere outside Springfield. The polaroid of Jonny lounging shirtless at the beach had already been deposited discreetly under the mattress.

Pennants for the Cubs and the Blackhawks. His skates and an old stick in the corner. His record player and the crate that contained his collection. And out the window, a view of trees so thick and green that, after the Texas desert, the color almost hurt.

Patrick stood quietly in the middle of his new dorm room, unsure of what came next. Was it too early to call home?

Suddenly the door banged against the wall, and a family of… Five? Six? No, seven people were pouring into his room, and they were all speaking a language that was very much not English. He thought it might have been Russian? But it was hard to be sure when most of his experience with Russians began and ended with James Bond villains. 

“Um, hello?”

“Hello.” Patrick was approached by a small, shy-looking boy with the biggest goddamn blue eyes he’d ever seen on someone not himself. “I’m Artemi. I am new roommate?”

“Oh! Hey. Patrick Kane. Or Kaner.” They shook hands. He was glad at least someone was the person who was supposed to live here.

“ _ Kenner, _ ” Artemi repeated slowly, his accent thickening it. “You can call me Breadman.”

“Breadman?” Patrick laughed out loud. He might end up liking this kid.

“Is hockey nickname. I travel here to play for team, maybe make shitty hockey school not so shitty.”

Ooooooooh. Everything suddenly made a lot more sense. Artemi gestured to the skates and stick in the corner.

“You play?” he asked.

“Not as part of a team in a while, but yeah.”

“Position?”

“Right wing.”

“No way! I am left wing!” 

“No shit! We should practice sometime!”

“You want go now?”

Patrick grinned and grabbed his skates. Maybe this semester would be salvageable after all.

“Yeah. We go now.”

***

“And my roommate is great. He’s Russian, and his English isn’t stellar but he’s teaching me how to swear, and he’s a hockey player--” 

“Is he cuter than me?” Jonny’s voice came teasing through the pay phone. Patrick twisted his fingers through the cord, giving absolutely zero shits about the line forming behind him in the dorm hall. 

“No, he’s not. And he’s not a better player than you, either, because I know you were going to ask.” 

“Look, can you blame me for wanting to make sure my boyfriend is on lock during his wild first semester at college?”

Boyfriend. HolyJesus, Patrick liked the sound of that. 

“You know I think your possessiveness is cute,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat, remembering all the people around him. “So how’s the job search going?”

“It’s over, actually. I got the job. The coach upped for the army, so I’m gonna be taking over all the programs in the school system, from pee wee up through the high school team.” 

“No way, isn’t Coach Q a little old to be going to Vietnam?”

“Yeah, his son got drafted so he decided to go over. He served in Korea so I think he’s like, a corporal or something.” 

“Damn. Hope he’s alright.”

“Me too.” There was the requisite silence that happened whenever the war was brought up. Patrick moved on.

“Pretty excited to see Coach Toews though. You gonna boss me around now like one of your players?”

“Why? Would that be hot?”

Patrick hated that Jonny was so cocky, but damn if it didn’t do something to him. He felt a flush go through him that made him hyper aware of everyone else watching him use the phone. 

“No comment. Listen, I gotta go, but I’ll call again tomorrow, okay?”

“Goin’ to hit the showers, Peeks?”

“Fuck you,” he said, hanging up the phone. And if he checked if the showers were open on the way back to his room, so what?

***

Patrick thought about Jonny everywhere he went. If he was studying in the library, he would picture Jonny hunched over his calculus, eventually getting frustrated, turning to redo Patrick’s French instead. When he walked home through the woods at night, he would imagine the two of them up ahead, each with a pair of skates slung over their shoulders, on their way to the pond or the field house. He wanted to grab them both coffee while Jonny reserved a spot by the fire in the student lounge. He wanted to steal a kiss in the stacks when no one was looking. He wanted to root for Jonny on the ice whenever he rooted for Temi. He wanted the softness and safety that came with being his, every day, not just one quarter at a time through the payphone, or one weekend a month. He still wanted all the hours in between--and that made every lonely minute ten times longer. 

In spite of how much Patrick hated seeing Temi carve up the ice without Jonny on it next to him, they became fast friends. An instant exotic commodity, Artemi got them into party after party--even if he wasn’t exactly popular with his teammates. They weren’t all quite as accepting of their new Russian friend as Patrick was, and Temi was obsessed with proving them wrong. So Patrick pretty much became his hockey trainer, too. They went down to the field house every night they weren’t drinking, a stopwatch in one of Patrick’s hands, a clipboard with notes in the other. Patrick was grateful for the distraction as outside, summer turned to fall. 

***

Of course, Temi wasn’t Jonny. Nothing was. And when Patrick came back to Cedar Lake for the first time in mid-October, he didn’t bother stopping home first. 

“Patrick, bud, how are ya?!” Oshie said, pulling Patrick in for a crushing bro-hug. They’d been invited to a bonfire at his lakehouse, and Jonny had insisted they make an appearance.

Even though he’d have preferred to have Jonny to himself, Patrick had to admit that being out on the lake wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening. The sun had dipped below the horizon. The reds and golds of the trees were fading to black. There was plenty of beer, and the view was stunning, and he got to watch Jonny get frustrated as he burned marshmallow after marshmallow, determined to win at s’mores. Soon the guys had drifted off, taking their girlfriends toward Oshie’s lake house or boat. The night’s crispness had turned to a full-blown chill and Patrick had just popped open a third beer to keep him warm when Jonny leaned over him. 

“Follow me,” he whispered in Patrick’s ear. 

“Huh?”

“You really think I’m going to see you for the first time in a month and a half and keep you here with Broshie? ” Jonny whispered in Patrick’s ear. Patrick grinned.

“I thought--”

“Fuck no. My house was full of people and I wanted you all to myself. C’mon.” 

Jonny pulled Patrick up by the hand, eyes locked on his as he brought their intertwined fingers to his mouth for a kiss. It was risky, and Patrick looked around, but no one was there. Of course Jonny wouldn’t let them be seen. He started walking backwards, and Patrick was helpless but to follow his lead into the woods. 

“Where are we going?”

Jonny didn’t answer. The glow of the fire and the sound of Jonny’s friends faded as they went deeper and deeper, but Jonny wasn’t satisfied until they had reached the edge of the water again. Patrick wasn’t sure how long they had been walking, but he could see the tiny orange sun of the bonfire all the way across the water.

“We’re going nightswimming,” Jonny said briskly. Patrick’s jaw dropped.

“It’s October.”

Jonny just shrugged and started unbuttoning his shirt. And what the hell was Patrick supposed to do, tell him to button back up? So he guessed they were going nightswimming.

Jonny dropped his flannel to the ground and pulled his undershirt over his head. His stomach stretched as he lifted his thick arms, the rippled planes catching what little light there was reflecting off the water. When his head emerged he was grinning.

“You coming with me or just gonna watch the show?”

“Mm, I dunno. The view from here isn’t half bad. Lake and the stars and all.”

Grinning right back, Patrick began to undress. The autumn air breezed over his chest. Goosebumps raised over his skin in spite of himself. When he looked back up Jonny’s jeans had dropped to the ground, and fuck, now he had get in the water if he wanted to escape with some dignity. He took a deep breath and waded into the lake up to his waist, only as far as he had to.

“Jesus, fuck Jon,” Patrick hissed, hugging himself as the freezing water gripped his body.

“Aren’t you from Buffalo? Aren’t you supposed to be tough as nails? Weren’t you born in a blizzard and raised by polar bears?”

“Alright, alright. Give it a rest, Winterpeg. You’re Canadian, we get it.”

Patrick was counting on Jonny to warm him up, and he dutifully obliged, wading over to snake his hands around Patrick’s waist. But after a solid five minutes of making out, Patrick was still shivering. 

“Okay,” Jonny said, “maybe it’s colder than I thought.”

“You think?”

“Give me one second.”

Jonny led them back to the shore, and as grateful as Patrick was to be back on dry land, damn if there wasn’t something about watching him emerge from the water. Jonny wandered past some bushes, returning with a pair of blankets and some towels.

“They’re a bit grassy, but they’ll do.”

“You brought blankets? When did you have time--”

“Drove ‘em out here between practices. I wanted to romance you properly, Peeks.”

If it wasn’t so damn cold, it would’ve been really cute.

“Here,” Jonny said, “let me.”

Jonny went to work then, wrapping the towel around Patrick’s shoulders and massaging it over his hair. He laid out one of the blankets, then lowered Patrick onto it before pulling the second blanket on top of them. And suddenly they were flush, chest to chest, nothing but a couple pairs of soaked boxers between them. Patrick could feel  _ everything,  _ and suddenly all of it was coming together--the lake, the blankets, the waiting, the convenient excuse to be next-to-naked. Patrick felt instantly what they were about to do. What he wanted to do, if Jonny would let him. The only trouble was that he had never… done the thing they were about to do. A trill of nervousness ran through his body. 

“Have you...?” Patrick asked.

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

“Do you think we can?”

“We’ll have to eventually, right?”

“We don’t have to do anything, Patrick. You know that, right?”

“But I want to. Jesus Christ, Jonny, I want to.” Patrick sat up on his elbows to suction Jonny’s mouth in for a kiss, pulling Jonny into his mouth the way he wanted to pull all of Jonny into his body. He wanted to make a home for Jonny in him, to feel him move in him, be strong for him, to walk through whatever pain he had to to break through to that other side where they couldn’t be any closer than they were in that moment. “Please let me. If you want to too, I mean.”

“Patrick, I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life.”

Jonny settled Patrick back down on the blanket. His skin was furiously hot, drying the lake water off so quickly it could’ve been steaming, and heat was coming off of him in waves. Patrick could feel how nervous he was, how much he didn’t want to hurt him--but he needn’t have worried. Patrick had wanted to be the one to do this as long as he’d known who Jonny was. He felt so special to be the one who could. He knew it wouldn’t exactly be comfortable at first, but if anyone was going to make it good, it would be Jonny. Patrick leaned up into his mouth again, pushing up with his hips, trying to pour his trust into him with every movement. To communicate how he just knew that Jonny was going to take care of him. 

And fucking hell, he did.

***

Two days after returning to IU, Patrick had yet to get out of bed. He’d missed four classes already. He had yet to stop listening to the pile of records earmarked for when he was missing Jonny--mostly Simon and Garfunkel, some stuff they’d bought on the Dallas trip, a weird record Jonny liked by an alternative band called the Velvet Underground. Jonny had marked a specific song for him called “Pale Blue Eyes,” that he said reminded him of Patrick. Patrick had listened to it on repeat until Temi threw his pillow at him. 

“Petrick!” 

Patrick was lying on his bed, listening to Songs for Leonard Cohen, when Temi nearly burst down the door. He jumped on top of Patrick, punching him with all 150 pounds of his very excited body. 

“Petrick! I made first line! I made first line! I showed those goddamn American cocksuckers!”

Patrick laughed and shoved Temi off in spite of his own angst. 

“Hey, American cocksucker over here, remember?” he said.

Temi bounced up, digging out his skates from under a pile of laundry.

“No, no, you are American, but not cocksucker.”

Part of Patrick went to say that technically speaking, he actually was more of a cocksucker than any of those guys ever would be, though he supposed you never knew--but yeah. He should probably not say that. 

“Come,” Temi said, tossing him his skates. “We go celebrate.”

“How are we celebrating?”

“More practice!” Patrick had to jump up to follow Temi, who was already halfway down the hall. “I want to make those Americans learn the name that is Breadman!”

***

They went to the field house and Patrick fed Temi pucks for what must have been hours.

“Four.” 

He would slap the puck to Breadman. Breadman would hit it in the four corner.

“Two.” 

And Temi would SMACK it in the two corner. Every time, right on the money. Over and over and over again.

“Aren’t you tired of celebrating? One.”

SMACK .

“Don’t know. Aren’t you tired of moping in room, listening to sad music? Again.” 

“Go to hell. Three.”

SMACK. After hitting the puck, Temi put the stick up to his mouth like a microphone, screwing up his face like he was in pain and singing.

“Linger oooon, your pale blue eeeeeeeyes… ” 

“That’s it.”

Patrick took off across the ice, chasing a laughing Artemi until the Zamboni driver shooed them into the locker room. Patrick was tired but happy as they dressed, exhausted in the particularly content way only skating or sex could make him.

“Okay,” Temi said, pulling his toque over his head, “Now is time to  _ actually _ celebrate.”

“What, you wanna do squats now?”

“Eh, fuck you.” Temi walked over to his hockey bag, looking around conspiratorially, and opened it to show Patrick a tupperware of brownies. 

“Brownies?”

“Not just any brownies, eh? How is that for celebration?” 

“I love you, Breadman.”

***

Thirty minutes later and they were lying on their backs in the middle of the football field, blissed out and giggling up at the clear night sky. 

“Petrick, Petrick, Petrick,” Temi snorted, making Patrick suddenly homesick for Sharpy, “I have to tell you. I figured out why you only listen sad music. Why you are, what is word? Ah, yes. Why you are sad sack.”

This earned him a punch on the arm, but he didn’t seem to care. 

“Yeah? Why is that? Enlighten me, Detective Panarin.”

“I know your secret.” Patrick was high enough that his fear had barely caught up to him by the time Temi went on. “You have secret girlfriend!” 

Patrick laughed out loud. 

“You don’t know shit, Breadman.” 

Though there was no heat to it, Patrick did feel the burn of a blush on his cheeks. Was he that obvious?

“Uh-uh, Kenner. I know why you always smiling on the phone but sad in room. You think I am stupid, but nobody talk to parents that much. I don’t talk to family in Russia that much.”

“You’re just high.”

“Why else would you not take all the excellent chances I give you at parties? Huh? You never pick up girls because you already have girl.” 

Okay, so he wasn’t exactly  _ wrong. _ At least, not in the ways that mattered. And he definitely wasn’t going to let it go. At least, not until Patrick’s high had completely worn off, and he couldn’t have that. He sighed dramatically.

“Okay. Maybe something like that.”

“Petrick!” Artemi pounded his arm. “This is excellent! Why you not bring her here?! I want to meet this girl who has you so in love!”

“Secret for a reason, Breadman.”

Temi was undeterred, of course. He flipped on his side to look at Patrick, red-rimmed blue eyes all stars. 

“Tell me about her. I want to know what love is like.” 

The haze of his high cushioning around him like a cloud, Patrick smiled up at the stars that had blanketed him and Jonny only a couple months ago. He found his mouth running like a river, unable to stop now that somebody had asked.

“Well, she’s passionate.”

“ _ Pessionate. _ I don’t think I know this word.”

“Like… Like she’s made of fire. Competitive as hell. You two would get along well, actually. But she’s soft, too. She’s only so competitive because she cares too much. Cares about everything, absolutely everything. Definitely cares too much about me, for sure.”

“Well yes, clearly she is crazy to be with you.”

Patrick couldn’t even care enough to respond to the chirp.

“She is crazy! She drives me fucking crazy. Half the time we want to kill each other, and then the next moment we’re laughing about something no one else would find funny.” He considered for a moment. “Or we’re making out like high schoolers.”

“Oh, she has perfect body?” Temi asked, rapt. 

“Oh yeah. Unbelievable.” Temi flopped back on his back, as though trying to imagine this perfect girl. “There’s nobody else like her. I trust her with my life. She’s my best friend.”

“This sounds nice.” They just laid there for a minute, sharing in the bliss. Patrick felt so lucky. “Petrick, you must marry this woman.” 

“I don’t know about that.”

“Why not? Clearly she is the One. I have never seen a man so in love.” 

“Our families wouldn’t approve. Let’s just leave it at that.” 

“Ah. So society tries to keep you apart.”

“Yeah,” Patrick said quietly. He wasn’t wrong. 

“Well, secret love is better than no love, right?” 

“Yeah, it is.”

Patrick looked back up at the stars, trying to piece together the constellations Jonny had pointed out to him that night in the field. Temi was right. It really was. 

***

“Patrick? Is everything okay?”

It was after midnight, and Patrick knew his phone call had probably woken up Jonny’s mom, which wasn't cool, but whatever. His mind could pull nothing out of the fog but Jonny.

“Yeah. I just had to hear your voice.”

“Oh.” He could practically hear the blush travel over the phone lines. “It’s nice to hear your voice, too.”

“I like that I can hear you smiling,” Patrick said, still loose from his brownie, continuing before Jonny could respond. “So turns out everyone at school knows about you, my secret girlfriend. ” 

Jonny laughed out loud.

“Oh yeah? Glad everyone knows what a chick magnet you are.”

“Biggest stud around, baby. Everyone wants to meet you. Breadman wants to meet, and I quote, this girl who has me so in love. ”

“In love, huh?”

Shit. Shit shit shit. Did he say that? Patrick was still high, but he wasn’t  _ that _ high.

“Did I say that? Temi’s words, not mine.”

“Ah,” Jonny said. Patrick stared down at the graffiti scratched into the phone, squirming in the silence. He wasn’t sure if he’d revealed or taken back too much. Of course he was in love with him, had been since before Jonny knew his name, but could he say that? Jonny went on. “Well… Whoever’s words they were. I mean. If they were true. Then. You would be loved back. That’s all.”

“Yeah?” Patrick’s face split into a smile. “I love you, too.”

“Oh, uh. Thanks.” 

Patrick could picture Jonny’s bashful smile, probably looking down at his feet, the same one he got whenever he was praised. His heart flooded with affection for this dork , who was smooth as spun sugar when taking care of Patrick but turned into an utterly awkward mess the second Patrick turned it back at him. It was like he wanted to be the one to take care of Patrick, knew he should be, but didn’t think he deserved reciprocation. Patrick wanted to spend every day proving him wrong. 

“Come visit me,” he said. It wasn’t a request. He said it just like when Jonny had told him to come to Dallas, pulling the trump card they both knew they had, but only used when they couldn’t be apart a minute longer.

“You think? Would that--would that be a good idea?”

“Sure, why not? People’s friends visit them all the time. I can kick Breadman out and tell him you’re gonna sleep in his bed. And then you could… not sleep in his bed.” 

“That does sound appealing… Fuck, I don’t know, Peeks.” 

“C’mon, Jon. Come see me.” 

There was a single silent moment.

“Okay. I’ll be down next weekend.”

***

It was just like Patrick imagined it would be. Right up until the party was over.

It had been an absolutely perfect day. Jonny had gotten there early, and Patrick had made him waffles in the dorm cafeteria. He’d shown him around the campus and watched the last of the little golden leaves float down from the trees around Jonny’s head. Their breath had fogged together as they wound their way through the tailgate, pressing their shoulders together to shout their way through the afternoon football game. Afterwards they’d gotten pizza with Temi, who, with no idea he was meeting Patrick’s perfect girl, had invited them to a frat party that night.

What could go wrong? Sounded fun.

Patrick had started them off with a beer each. He’d walked them up to Jonny, who was stood alone on the wall, expression unreadable. He’d tried to get him to loosen up--pairing with him for beer pong, introducing him to guys from his classes. Nothing seemed to be working, so he’d made them a pair of vodka lemonades. Vodka wasn’t Jonny’s thing, so it was back to beer. When shots of Jungle Juice were passed around, he’d told Jonny to go for it. If anyone deserved to have fun, it was him. He deserved a night where he didn’t have to be the captain, the coach, the perfect son, the closet case. Patrick hadn’t caught whether or not Jonny had taken the shot or not--he’d been busy listening to Breadman explain how he was going back to the dorm of this girl from  _ keppa keppa pi _ , which was really fucking funny if you were two shots and four beers in, plus change. When Jonny leaned over and asked if they could go, Patrick had thought it was his turn to get lucky.

So what if Jonny was quiet the whole walk back? It had started snowing, and in the lamp light he was so pretty, and drunk Patrick was infinitely distractible by things like these. 

It didn’t dawn on Patrick that something was wrong until Jonny turned on the lights the second they entered Patrick’s dorm. Ugly and bright and fluorescent, they’d sobered Patrick up real quick. He’d pictured this moment so many times, shadowy and romantic--and now Jonny was just sitting on the edge of his bed looking at the floor. That same bed Patrick had spent night after night trying to wish Jonny into. Now he was here, but he didn’t look like Jonny. He looked smaller somehow, and vaguely embarrassed, as though he had caught Patrick cheating on him. 

“Jonny?” He was silent. “What is it? Talk to me.” When Jonny finally spoke, he was quiet.

“When you were drinking tonight. You sounded just like you did on the phone last week.”

“Okay?” Patrick didn’t follow. As he always did when he was actually upset and not just arguing, Jonny was looking anywhere but at him.

“Were you high the first time you said you loved me?” 

Patrick thought he felt the floor go out from under him.

“I mean, yeah, maybe a little, but… But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. I mean, I wasn’t high all the times I’ve said it since then.”

Patrick sat down next to him and reached out, and when Jonny pulled back it felt as good as a slap.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Jon, c’mon. Why does it matter? You know I love you. What’s the difference how I said it?” 

Patrick was panicking. He would’ve said anything. Jonny got up, pacing now, as though the room wasn’t big enough to be as far from Patrick as he wanted to be. 

“Because it means something, Patrick! What does it say about how you feel about me that you had to be on something to tell me?”

“I was high and I was honest, that’s all, I don’t know--”

“I mean, if you even… The first time we kissed you were drunk. Do you even… Do you even love me? Or am I just the guy who’s around when you’re wasted?”

If Jonny’s goal was to wound Patrick, he succeeded.

“How could you say that? Is that really what you think of me?” 

Jonny finally looked at him, and when their eyes met, Patrick wished they hadn’t. In a second it didn’t matter anyway--he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the tears that stung them. He threw on his coat, his hat and grabbed his bag.

“Fuck,” Jonny said, reaching out. “Peeks…” 

“Don’t call me that. And don’t wait up. Although I guess you wouldn’t anyway, since apparently I’m just a drunk piece of shit who doesn't love you.”

The door fell heavily in its frame, feeling final when it did. 

***

It was past three in the morning when Patrick heard Jonny’s voice again. 

“Thought I might find you out here.”

Patrick looked up, squinting to make out Jonny’s form through the snow. The pond, just barely frozen and sitting on the outskirts of campus and surrounded by pine trees, was the perfect place to skate yourself clean. He had just been standing on the ice, not even moving anymore, looking up at the moon as though it would have answers for him. It didn’t, but then Jonny had appeared, the snow muffling the sounds of his approach. He skated up to him now, bearing a styrofoam cup of coffee. Patrick looked back up at the sky.

“Why didn’t you come sooner then?” he said.

“I wanted to give you some space.” Jonny stopped a few feet from him. “And I needed to find skates and this campus is a fucking maze.” Patrick gave a small smile, which felt a little like poking a cut that was only halfway healed. Jonny held out the steaming cup. “I thought maybe you could use something to warm you up. I know you don’t like the cold.” 

Patrick took the cup, heart twisting as their fingers brushed, even through their gloves. 

“Thanks.”

“Pat, I--” 

“Just c’mere.” 

Within seconds of Patrick setting the coffee down, Jonny had enveloped him in an embrace. Patrick soothed his hands over Jonny’s back, so glad to be back fitted into him where he belonged. Fuck, it was stupid and dangerous, out in the open like this, but it was late, and there was no one around, and he was tired. He pulled away just enough to kiss the side of Jonny’s face, then down his cheek, to his lips. 

“I’m so sorry, Peeks. I just, with being at home while you’re here, having the time of your life, as you should be--but its just so easy to be--”

“I know.”

“I’m the only guy you’ve ever been with. What if you got here and found out that it was never really me--it was just someone?”

“Jon, you’re such a fucking idiot.” Patrick chuckled through the lump in his throat, lips still brushing against Jonny’s. “I love you, but you’re such a fucking idiot.”

“I know, I know, I know.”

“Do you even realize how much I miss you?” He pushed his forehead against Jonny’s, making him look him square in the eye. It was a trick he’d learned from Jonny himself. “There’s never a time when I’m not thinking about you. Ever. Everywhere I go, I think about how much better it would be if you were here. The library, the rink, restaurants, classes. Everything that’s supposed to be good, just isn’t because you’re not here for it. So don’t tell me it isn’t you, Jon, because its always been you, and it's never even been a choice, and if there was a way to make a choice that hurt less I promise I would’ve figured it out way back when I was watching you dance at Prom.” He’d never intended to admit all this, but like he said, he was tired of missing Jonny. Whatever put him back in his arms. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Jonny kissed him then, a fragile, far cry from the man the world knew as Jonathan Toews. He pulled back, made him look at him again.

“I have been in love with you since before you knew who I was. I don’t know how else to spell it out for you. Get it?”

Jonny nodded.

“Good.” He kissed Jonny again, gentle, like a reward. That was something he’d learned from him, too. “Can we go back to the room now? The hours until Breadman comes back are running out and I’ve been looking forward to having you in that bed for going on three months now.”

Jonny gave a shaky laugh. 

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Together they trudged back through the snow. Patrick had intended to use their hours of alone time more wisely, he really had--but he was asleep the minute Jonny’s head hit the pillow and his head hit Jonny’s chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple quick notes:
> 
> -Weird fact, Jonathan Toews' birthday actually was called up for the 1969 draft lottery. Not right away, he wasn't actually six, but he would've been drafted and Patrick's birthday wouldn't have.
> 
> -Suggested listening: as mentioned, Jonny's song for Patrick is "Pale Blue Eyes" by the Velvet Underground. Patrick's song for Jonny is "Kathy's Song" by Simon and Garfunkel. This chapter is named after "These Days" by Nico, which is quite lovely as well.


	5. Miller Genuine Draft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick and Jonny celebrate the holidays.

_ November 1969 _

_ Cedar Lake, Indiana _

If only that had been the end of it. Years later, Patrick would wish that had been the end of it. 

A week later and Patrick was home for Thanksgiving. It had made the past week bearable, knowing they’d been reunited again so soon, which was all the more necessary since the phone calls were no longer helping. It was like Jonny was determined to prove that his insecurity had been a blip, an aberration. More than once he missed Patrick’s calls and “forgot” to return them. What was this, amateur hour? Did he really think Patrick didn’t know him at all? Anyone who knew him was aware that Jonathan Toews didn’t forget anything. 

And even though out on the pond Patrick had said he understood, if he was totally honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he did. Sure, he got that Jonny wanted what he had. He got that he wanted to be part of Patrick’s world. But he could’ve been. Patrick had asked him to, repeatedly. But Jonny had been too stubborn to let himself have that. And by extension, to let Patrick have him.

Maybe Patrick was still a little hurt about it.

Of course, none of that had seemed to matter when Jonny showed up on his front doorstep to spend Thanksgiving with them. ( _ American Thanksgiving, _ as he repeatedly pointed out. He and his family would be celebrating a different day). He looked like the picture of the guy you’d want to bring home to your family--if that was something you were allowed to do. He was wearing a button-up shirt under a sweater, neat and cozy while still stretching just a shade too tight over his chest and biceps. Standing there holding a homemade pie ( _ Hope I didn’t mess it up too bad, Mrs. K, _ he would say later), everything else seemed to vanish. What did it matter if he was mad at his boyfriend? He had a boyfriend, and they loved each other. Everything else was secondary.

Or should’ve been. But that wasn’t the world that Patrick lived in.

“So,” Patrick’s uncle said halfway through the meal, when the football game had been discussed ad nauseum. “What are your plans for the spring, Jonathan?”

“Not sure yet, sir,” Jonny said. “Hoping to keep taking care of my mom. Keep coaching and working with kids. But it's hard to say right now.” 

“Well,” his uncle said, “I guess we’ll find out in a few days, won’t we?”

“ _ Dad _ ,” Jackie hissed, and the table fell silent. It had just been alluded to what they were all thinking about, but what no one would mention: that in five days, the draft lottery would occur, and a third or more of boys Patrick and Jonny’s age would be randomly chosen. Patrick was safe because he was in college. But Jonny was not. 

“It’s okay,” Jonny cleared his throat. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about it.”

Meanwhile Patrick, the only one calm at the table, was helping himself to more potatoes.

“What’s there to think about?” he said. “I mean, if you get drafted, you can just go back to Canada.”

The only sound was of Patrick getting more turkey. The forks scraped in the silence, and finally he stopped. Why wasn’t Jonny responding?

“Right, Jon? I mean, you  _ are _ going back to Canada if something happens. There is literally no reason for you to go to Vietnam.”

But Jonny just stood up, putting down his napkin politely.

“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. K. Jackie.”

And he stepped outside. Patrick was a hell of a lot less courteous when he followed him.

“I know what you’re about to do,” Patrick said. “And I’m gonna stop you right there and say don’t do it.”

“Do what, Patrick? And whatever it is, do we have to do it on your front lawn? Now?”

“We can do it now or we can do it in a month when you ship out for no good reason.”

“I understand why you’re upset.”

But Patrick wasn’t upset, because his brain simply would not accept that this was happening. It wasn’t going to. Now he just had to convince Jonny of that. 

“I’m not upset. Why would I be upset when you’re just talking nonsense that isn’t going to happen?”

“You’re right. I might not even get drafted.”

Jonny had said it in that same no-nonsense way, that simple-fact, absolute-truth, authoritative kind of way he had when he wasn’t going to accept any argument. This was just the way things were, it seemed to say. We can go through the motions or you can accept it. Patrick was still searching for an option C, but it was quickly dawning on him that there wasn't one.

“But if you do?” he said, hating the way his voice shook after Jonny’s hadn’t.

“If they ask me to go… I’m gonna go.” The shaking had spread from Patrick’s voice. His hands were trembling now, and he wasn’t sure how to make them stop. “If I go, that’s one less guy who has to. One less kid out of some town in Iowa or something--"

“I don’t care about some kid in Iowa. I care about you. Your mom cares about you. ”

“Patrick, please. Stop.”

“I’ll stop when you come to Canada with me.”

“And just run away?”

“For Chrissake, it's where you’re from . You’ve been here what, a year? This isn’t your war, it's not like you’d be some run-of-the-mill draft dodger!”

“That’s exactly what I’d be.”

“Fuck.” Patrick had expected himself to shout, to fight and trash. But how did you fight against something immovable? How did you fight against stone? He had to sit down on the curb. His head was spinning. “I need a cigarette. Do you have a cigarette?”

Jonny handed him one and he lit up, inhaling in and holding it until he could convince himself the nicotine was to blame. 

“You know if you do this,” he said, “there’s a real, probable chance that the next time your family sees you it will be in pieces? That this isn’t some hockey game to battle through, but that actual human beings will want to see you dead?”

Jonny sat down next to him, but made no attempt to touch.

“Patrick, I won’t ask you to understand. I know why you don’t. But it's only a year, and when I get back--”

“If. If you get back.”

“If I get back, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to have you waiting for me.”

Patrick sniffed, taking another drag from fingers that wouldn’t. Stop. Goddamn. Shaking. 

“You can’t watch me walk into a gay bar but I’m supposed to watch you go off to die?”

No response.

“I think you should leave, Jonny. I think you should leave.”

He didn’t turn to watch Jonny go back into the house, grab his coat, apologize to his family, accept their thanks for being brave. He didn’t turn at the sound of the truck pulling out of the driveway, either. How could he, when it could have been the last glimpse he’d ever get?

And sure, maybe Jonny wouldn’t get drafted. Maybe his number would never be called. But then why did it feel so inevitable?

***

It kept feeling inevitable for the next five days until draft day. It felt inevitable as Patrick sat in his room, not caring if his family thought he was queer for caring so much. It felt inevitable as Sharpy picked him up to take him to the bar where they’d watch the numbers get called. It felt that way all the way up until they called April 29th--the number was six. Out of 366 days including leap days, with the lowest numbers going first, Jonathan Toews pulled a lucky number six. He was as good as gone.

And fuck it, so was Patrick.

“Kaner…” Patrick was vaguely aware that Sharpy was talking, but he couldn’t bring himself to be concerned with what he said. He just tapped the edge of the bar.

“Bartender? Can I get another shot? You know what,” he fished all the bills out of his wallet, “better make it the bottle. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, whatever gets the job done.” 

“That your number, kid?”

“Yessir. Lucky number six.”

“Keep it.” He passed Patrick back the money along with the bottle. “Thanks for your service.” 

“Sure thing.”

Patrick saluted him vaguely, grabbing his things and venturing out into the night, Sharpy trailing behind.

“Go home, Patrick,” Sharpy pleaded. “Think about this shit. Sleep on it before you go to war for some fucking boy.”

“Goodnight, Sharpy.”

An hour later, Patrick stood, still carrying around the empty bottle, on the bridge over the narrow end of Cedar Lake. The water wasn’t fully frozen yet, and if you tried really hard to make your drunk eyes focus, you could locate the spaces between ice floes. 

The textbooks hitting the water sounded more like  _ ker-thunk _ than _ splash _ . His skates sent up much more fanfare--blade first, they cut the water in a unique sort of way. 

He wouldn’t need them anymore.

The next morning, he wasn’t very clear-headed, but his purpose could have been crystal. He cut through the hangover and the tight fist of protesters to bang open the door to the door to the recruiter’s office.

“Sir? My name is Patrick Kane and I’m here to enlist.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening: "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by the irreplaceable Darlene Love.


	6. Blackhawks Squad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick arrives in Vietnam.

_ March 1970 _

_ Southern Vietnam, outside Bien Hoa _

He could see the house clearly.

It was small, sure. More of a cabin than a house. Just one bedroom. But what did they need more for? They had a kitchen. They had a vegetable garden for Jonny. They had a living room with bookshelves and a comfortable couch and a view of the sunrise. They had photos on the walls of the places they’d been together--a dozen trips just like the Dallas one. Patrick had memories of them all. There was nothing they wanted. There were no neighbors but the trees and a never-ending expanse of lake begging for their skates. 

He could see them getting old there. He could see himself, putting wood on the fire every day in the winter. Jonny driving into town to coach kids at the local school. He could see them with a kid of their own someday--a girl. Two girls and a boy. Chickens and pets and nobody to bother them or threaten them or shoot at them. He saw them even getting married, someday far into the future, on the steps of a courthouse. Jonny had crow’s feet and silver hair. Patrick had none. They were happy, and he could see it, and it felt so warm. 

And then the bus went over a pothole, and he woke up.

Patrick blinked slowly. He sat up, feeling the marks on his face from where he’d fallen asleep against the window. He felt the separation anxiety of the disappearing dream, but there wasn’t time to think about it. The base was coming into view. He leaned over and elbowed Sharpy.

“We’re here.”

***

Three months before that, they’d been on a different bus together back across the ocean in Chicago. Patrick had been sitting alone, watching his family drive away as he waited to go to boot camp. He knew Jonny had already been shipped out--it was a small town, word got around--and he was feeling like he’d made a huge mistake when he heard a voice above him.

“Anyone sitting here?” He looked up to see Sharpy. He sat down without waiting for an answer. Patrick thought he might be seeing things.

“Sharpy? What are you doing here?”

“Going to basic training, what does it look like?” 

“But you…” He tried to find the words but he didn’t have to. They both knew Sharpy didn’t have to go. He just looked ahead, unflappable as always.

“I mean, we’ll all have to go eventually, right? Figured I might as well keep an eye on you while I’m there.”

It was a really great start to his military career, getting teary on the bus and all. 

Of course, Patrick had already realized that his plan to follow Jonny was a flawed one. Not only was Jonny gone by the time Patrick went to basic, but there was an active policy  _ against _ stationing men from the same cities and families together. You know, so that if a battalion was wiped out, it wouldn’t decimate an entire blood line or town. Lying in his bunk one night during bootcamp, staring at the ceiling feeling exhausted and sick with stupidity, it had dawned on Patrick that he did know one person who could help him. It was the last person he’d wanted to talk to under any circumstances, let alone to ask for anything. But he hadn’t come this far to  _ not protect Jonny _ . The choice was easy. The next day he’d made a phone call.

“Patrick?” 

“Hi, Dad.” 

There was a sick moment of silence. His dad didn’t respond, but he hadn’t hung up, so finally Patrick swallowed hard and pressed on. 

“I need a favor.” His hands were shaking, just like they had the last time they’d talked five years ago. “You know I would never ask if it wasn’t important, or if there was anyone else to go to. And I swear on my life, you’ll never have to hear from me again if you do this.”

Another long pause: “What do you need?” 

Patrick breathed a shaky sigh of relief. Maybe there was a God after all. 

“I enlisted in the military. I’m at basic now and I’m training to be a mechanic, but I need to get assigned to a specific base. I figured since you were so high up during Korea--” his father didn’t go by Mr. but by  _ Colonel  _ Kane, “that you could pull some strings.”

“Where do you need to go?” 

“Well, that’s just the thing. I don’t know. I need to be where somebody else is. And I need another guy to come with me, too.”

“Patrick, if this is some queer thing--”

“Jesus Christ, Dad, no, it's not.” His cheeks burned with shame. So what if it was? Luckily he’d come up with a lie beforehand. “It’s my fault he’s going over there, I figured it was my duty to make sure he’s okay.”

“Hmph. Maybe your uncle did make a man out of you.” Patrick didn’t care if his dad called him a candy ass if he was able to help him, but that didn’t stop the irony of it from tasting bitter in his mouth. “I’ll see what I can do.”

***

Two months later and they had finally been transferred to Bien Hoa to join a group nicknamed Blackhawks Squad. He’d received the telegram whilst elbow-deep in the hood of a jeep and he still had the grease-stained piece of paper at the bottom of his pack. Other than the orders, it read simply,  _ don’t say I never did anything for you.  _

Sharpy and Patrick got out of the bus and took in the camp. Mostly a collection of metal buildings and tents, it looked like their old base camp at Da Lat, but bigger. And of course, there was a chance Jonny was inside. There was also a chance he was out on a mission, or had been moved, or had already been wounded and sent home--among other things. But Patrick was going to focus on the chance that he might be just on the other side of all that army green canvas.

“Welcome home,” Sharpy said.  _ Welcome home indeed.  _ The words had barely left Sharpy’s mouth when they were greeted by a soldier with big blue eyes and sandy brown hair.

“One of you the new field reporter?” he said. 

“That’s me,” Sharpy said.

“Adam Burish. You’re coming with me.”

Sharpy looked back at him and shrugged, and suddenly Patrick was alone.  _ Well, better get this show on the road,  _ he thought. He walked up to a pair of guys smoking up against a wall. He addressed one of them, a guy with long, reddish hair and a wolfish face. His jacket, which was open over a thin bare chest, listed his name as Keith.

“Excuse me,” Patrick said nervously. He kicked himself--so much for sounding like a soldier. “I was told to report to the commanding officer here. I’m the new mechanic that was requested.”

Keith just looked at him blankly. Luckily the other guy swooped in, his strong, welcoming voice coming from about a head higher than Patrick. 

“Don’t worry about him. I’m Seabs, nice to meet ya.” 

“Kaner.” They shook hands. Thank God  _ somebody  _ was friendly around here.

“C’mon, Kaner. I’ll show ya around.” Seabs pushed off the wall then, Patrick following him as they set off around the compound.

“Listen, does that guy have an issue or something?” he asked when they were out of earshot of Keith. Seabs just laughed, a booming sound that filled Patrick with warmth. They turned down what seemed to be the equivalent of a neighborhood street, lined on either side with squat buildings that had screen doors and corrugated metal roofs. 

“Nah, that’s just Duncs. Him and I have been in the service together for what, seven years now? Maybe eight? Since we were eighteen, anyway. He’s just intense. He diffuses landmines and whatnot for us, so maybe it's a good thing he’s a little on edge, eh?” 

Oh. Patrick hadn’t thought a lot about land mines, but if he did, he’d want a guy like that taking care of them. 

“So what do you do, then?” Patrick asked.

“I’m the chaplain for this little base of ours. Go off on missions, read guys their last rites, keep Duncs in line. Things of that nature.”

“And be the one-man welcome mat, apparently.”

“Exactly. If you’re lucky, I’ll be your guy at the start of your time here, but I won’t be at the end.”

Patrick pictured this guy above him as he lay dying, bible in one hand and weapon in the other. With his broad shoulders and paternal air, you could do worse.

“Yeah, I’d rather not think about that.”

“Comes with the territory. Over there,” Seabs pointed towards one of the buildings, where two guys were sitting on the sandbags outside, “Is where you’ll probably be staying. From what I’ve heard, you’ll be with our guys, Blackhawks Squad.”

Blackhawks Squad. Supposedly that’s where Jonny was. Patrick felt his throat constrict.

“Where is your squad, anyway?” He was going for nonchalant and missed it by about a mile.

“Well, that’s two of ‘em there,” Seabs waved at the guys. “Hey Cat, Stromer.” He turned back to Patrick and they kept walking. “They’re inseparable. They went to highschool together, in Eerie I think. The rest of ‘em are around here somewhere. Except our interp guys, that is. They got tapped to fill in for another squad, but they should be back any time now.”

Interp. Wasn’t Jonny interp? Seabs kept going. Another pair of guys walked past them, smoking and deep in conversation. Seabs gave them a wave. 

“Saader, Mutt.”

They’d come to the end of the row of barracks. Seabs gestured to the massive tents, which all looked largely the same, canvas and grass-colored and sweaty.

“Over there’s chow, and it's that way to the Sarge’s tent--”

“Sarge?”

“Sergeant Colliton. Hopefully you won’t have to get to know him too well. And over there is medical, where my nephew works--there he is!” Seabs waved at a kid coming out of the tent. With pale skin and hair as thick and dark as Seabs’, he looked like he couldn’t have even been old enough to drink. “Kirby! Come say hi to the new guy!”

Kirby jogged over, smiling. He had to have been a good six inches taller than Patrick, but he didn’t seem to have quite grown into the limbs yet, like an extremely overgrown puppy. 

“Well,” Seabs said, “I’m supposed to be meeting with Colliton about ten minutes ago, so I’ll leave you in his capable hands. Welcome to the team, Kaner.”   
  


“Thanks.” With that, Seabs bowed out. Patrick did, actually, feel thoroughly welcomed. And unexpectedly warm. He turned to Kirby, who was holding out a hand. “I’m Kaner, by the way.”

“Kirby Dach, I’ll be your medic on any and all missions you may be inclined to go on.” 

“Dach is the doc, got it,” Patrick grinned. “Are you old enough to have a high school diploma? Let alone  _ medical experience _ ?”

“Hey, pray you never have to find out, right?” He was still smiling--did this kid ever stop smiling?--when he seemed to see someone behind Patrick and waved him over. “Boquer! Boquer!” He turned back to Patrick. “You gotta meet Adam. He’s our base pilot, can maneuver a chopper like you wouldn’t believe.”

And then there appeared a kid who somehow looked even  _ younger  _ than Kirby. Like, forget being old enough to drink, this kid looked like he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a  _ car, _ let alone a helicopter. He carried a palpable air of cockiness though, tags hanging loose over his chest, aviator sunglasses obscured by wave after wave of blonde hair. He went to Kirby’s side immediately, and call Patrick crazy, but was there something there?

“This is Kaner. He’s your new mechanic on base.”

“Oh,  _ finally.  _ You know I’ve only been requesting one since I got here.” He spoke with a thick accent Patrick couldn’t quite place, but he seemed to read Patrick’s mind. “Hello, Kaner. And because I know you are wondering, it’s Swedish.”

“I was absolutely wondering. Nice to meet you…” He trailed off, not quite understanding what Kirby had called him.

“Adam Boqvist, youngest pilot in the U.S. Army,” Boquer filled in proudly before Kirby could elbow him in the ribs. Or where would’ve been the ribs, if he wasn’t so much taller than him. So actually more around the chest area.

“We’re supposed to be eighteen, ya idiot,” Kirby said, grinning down at Boquer.

“Oh, yeah. Most average-aged pilot in the U.S. army.”   
  
Patrick just laughed and shook his head. He’d thought he’d feel like the young one, but compared to these kids he was  _ ancient.  _

“So how did a teenage Swede end up the youngest pilot in the U.S. Army?”

Boquer shrugged. They all started walking lazily toward the chow tent. 

“Emigrated to the U.S. a few years ago with my older brother. Next thing you know he gets drafted, there’s not a lot going on at home, so I figured why not? Seemed like the fastest way to get behind the controls of a chopper, so here I am.” 

Patrick wondered which was more genuine: the gutsy ambition, or the fact that he had followed his brother halfway around the world. Had everybody who’d enlisted followed somebody? Either way, Patrick thought that this group of guys might be alright after all. Kirby was going on about Adam’s flight skills, which Adam was embarrassedly denying, but when they entered the dining tent Patrick suddenly remembered he was still carrying his pack.

“I’m gonna go drop this off at the bunk, but I’ll catch up with you guys!” 

“No problem, bud! It's the fifth one down on your right.”

Patrick was halfway down the row of barracks when he saw him.

There, going into the bunk, the early evening sun ringing him like fire. His hair had grown out a little, and his arms had somehow gotten bigger. But Patrick would have recognized him anywhere. 

It was Jonny.

Jonny, who he hadn’t seen since November. Jonny, who he’d dreamt about every single night since then. Jonny, the lately absent love of his life. Mouth suddenly bone-dry, Patrick walked like he was in a trance up to the bunk. He opened the door, dropping his bag when he stepped inside. Jonny was facing the back, setting his things down on the bed. A line of sweat ran down the back of his shirt. After three months apart, he couldn’t believe he was so  _ close.  _

“Crow, is that you--” Jonny said, turning. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Patrick.  _ Fuckfuckfuck.  _ What had he been thinking all this time? What if Jonny hated him? Hated the way he’d left him? The last time they’d talked, Patrick had basically told him to fuck off and never speak to him again. What if he’d come over here and found someone else? He’d followed him to another continent, and now Jonny was going to tell him to go to hell.

“Jonny, I…” but Patrick wasn’t able to finish, because in just a few strides of his long legs Jonny had crossed the room to crush Patrick in his embrace. 

It was everything he’d remembered, but sweeter. Stronger. And the scent--God, the scent of him alone could’ve killed him. It was exactly the same. He couldn’t believe it was exactly the same. 

When Jonny spoke, the fact that it was muffled by Patrick’s shoulder couldn’t hide how  _ ragged  _ he sounded.

“I thought I’d never see you again--”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Patrick laughed. Shit, he couldn’t cry  _ here,  _ he’d just gotten here. But he felt so overwhelmed, like the happiness inside him was a rush of champagne bubbles and there was no cork to pop. 

“When you didn’t answer my letters--”

“You sent me letters? I didn’t get them, I was already here.”

“What are you  _ doing _ here?”

“Would you believe me if I said I was drafted?”

“I know you weren’t, you think I haven’t been following your number?”

Of course Jonny had followed his number. Patrick gave a sniffly chuckle. He’d never felt so loved by someone than in that one comment, and he’d never been so in love with the person who’d made it. 

“That’s where you’re wrong, baby. I  _ did  _ get drafted. Your number is my number.” 

Jonny pulled back to give him a look that, to anyone else, would be unreadable. 

“I’ve never wanted to kiss you as badly as I do right now,” Jonny whispered.

“We shouldn’t.”

“I know.” 

They did it anyway. It was quick, and secretive, and not a tenth of what Patrick wanted. But if this is what would get him a dishonorable discharge, fuck being honorable. 

Eventually, after getting Patrick set up on the cot next to Jonny’s, they ambled back towards dinner. Jonny told him everything, about the guys and the work he was doing and how often he’d thought of Patrick. Patrick told him about calling his dad, a revelation that seemed like it would’ve broken Jonny if they weren’t both so happy. They were catching up, and elbowing each other, and making contact as seldom as they could stand, which was about six seconds on average. The evening was hot, and sticky, and every time they brushed they would exchange a little bit of sweat. The food, when they got it, was close to inedible. He was in a new place, surrounded by new people, in the country where he was destined to take up arms. But sitting down across from Jonny, Patrick had never felt more relieved.

***

“Full house, motherfucker.”

“Damn, Taze, seems like you got me…” A hand of cards was turned over. “Except I got a straight flush.”

“Son of a bitch!”

Patrick laughed his ass off, sandwiched between guys who already felt like brothers. Sure, their dog tags might have listed them as Dylan, Alex, Duncan, Corey. But now they were Stromer, the Cat, Duncs, Mutt, Boquer and Crow. Jonny was Tazer to these guys, and Seabs looked after Kirby, and Kirby was constantly attached to Boquer, who was looked after by the Cat. Shawzy was also Mutt, and he was annoying to everybody, except Saader, who didn’t seem to mind. He’d heard Burish was trouble, and he’d put money on him and Sharpy being unbearable together. In one day he’d gained a dozen brothers, and he was sitting across from his boyfriend, and he really couldn’t be happier. Especially when his boyfriend was  _ so spectacularly bad  _ at poker.

“How the fuck did you know I was bluffing?” Jonny said disgustedly. Even with the door open the bunk was sweltering, and the sweat on his furrowed brow did nothing to make him less attractive.

“You have no poker face,” laughed Saader, pulling in his haul of cash and cigarettes. 

“Fucking horseshit,” Jonny mumbled. Patrick just laughed. Jonny had never in his life been able to hide his emotions, not for a second. 

The door banged open then and Sharpy and Bur entered the bunk. Sharpy’s shirt was off, chest glistening with sweat, hair still perfect as usual. 

“Is that…” Jonny leaned over to whisper to him.

“Mr. Sharp, the English teacher? Yes, Jonny. Yes it is.” Patrick waved to him. “Sharpy! Where you been all day?” 

“Just getting the scoop like any good reporter, Kaner.” Sharpy dropped down on a bed behind him, tousling Patrick’s hair before putting up his feet and lighting a cig. “Jonathan.”

“Uh… Hi, Mr. Sharp,” Jonny said, causing the room to erupt in laughter.

“You boys know each other?” Duncs asked.

“I was little Jonny here’s English teacher,” Sharpy said, shit-eating grin on his face.

“Kaner’s, too,” Jonny said, blushing. “And we were  _ coworkers _ when I was a coach.” 

“Yeah, which is why I had to come all the way out to Nowhere, Vietnam to keep an eye on you two idiots.”

“Aww, Sharpy just couldn’t live without me,” Kaner said. “Right, baby?”

“Yeah, tell that to my bug bites.”

“Wow, Sharp, you didn’t tell me you were  _ ancient, _ ” Bur piped up, stretched out leisurely on the bed behind him. 

“Will somebody just deal?” Jonny said, unfun as always. Goddamnit, Patrick loved him so much.

“Why? Didn’t realize you had any more money to lose, Tazer,” Shawzy chirped. And that was how the night went--chirping, jabbing, laughing. Recirculating the stash of cash and cigarettes between them. Turning up the radio. Shouting at each other to  _ turn that shit off, nobody likes country, Duncs.  _ Singing loudly but poorly when the Stones came on. Swatting mosquitoes and each other. 

You know. The stuff families do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I waited so long to do this Hawks ensemble content that two of my fave guys aren't even Hawks anymore 


	7. A Little Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The couple that goes on missions together, stays together. Or, Jonny and Patrick try to figure out how to get laid while out in the field with the Hawks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: a small amount of violence in this chapter. I know it's a Vietnam War fic but it's been pretty chill up until now, so I thought I'd mention. Mostly it's just a reference, nothing too explicit or graphic.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!

_May 1970_

_Vietnam Central Highlands_

“I came all the way to Vietnam,” Patrick shook his head and exhaled, “to smoke Virginia _fucking_ Slims.” 

He was sitting back-to-back with Sharpy and he definitely wasn’t supposed to be smoking at all. He heard Jonny’s voice in his head, reminding him how the glow of the ember would give away his position, and moved to sort of half-cover it from the view of the night. He’d never been as disciplined as Jonny about these things.

“Just be glad your ass is smoking and not getting smoked, huh Kaner?” Sharpy said, squirming against Patrick **.** He wasn’t a fan of being on night watch. 

“You really think my ass is smokin’, Sharpy?” 

“Y’know, I’d comment on that, but I’m pretty sure Tazer would murder me in my sleep if he even suspected me of looking.”

“Stranger things have happened out here.”

“Exactly. So would you shut up and pay attention?”

It was dark, but it was a textured darkness, where they could see that they were surrounded but not by what. The night sky could only be seen in snatches between the leaves of the trees, and Sharpy didn’t like it. His eyes kept darting around, like he was trying to count all the spaces.

“Look,” Patrick said, waving his cigarette casually, “it’s not my fault you and Bur are children and had to be separated so you can’t be on watch together anymore. What’s going on there, anyway? You guys are more married than me and Jonny.” Sharpy elbowed him. “Ow!”

“Shut up, I think I heard something.”

“Is it the sound of the wind in your perfect hair--ow!” 

He elbowed him again. For a moment, Patrick thought he heard something too, and they stayed deadly quiet and clutched their rifles until a fox emerged out of the woods. They both let out sighs of relief as it trotted by. Trying to distract himself, Sharpy picked back up where they left off.

“What the hell are you talking about, what’s going on there? Not all of us are out here sleeping with our best friends. We can’t all be so lucky to be getting laid out here in the jungle.”

“Okay, first of all, the fact that you would even _imply_ that Bur is your best friend and not me is hurtful and incorrect. Secondly, when do you think I’m getting laid? Before, during, or after spending all my time with you fuckers?”

“Oh, come on now. Surely you two are sneaking off for some afternoon delight every once in a while, right? Or at least getting handsy in the showers at camp?”

“Have you been in the showers? Get bent.” 

“Fair enough. So if not in the showers, then…” He seemed to have some sort of revelation, which was always bad news for Patrick. “Oh my God. Is it night patrol? You two _always_ get paired together for night patrol!” 

“I think you mean we always _used to_ get paired together for night patrol before you and your fat mouth had to ruin it,” Patrick said, blushing hard as Sharpy burst into barely-contained laughter.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Am I cockblocking you by being here right now? I am, aren’t I. This whole night is just one big cockblock.” 

“Alright, asshole. Calm down. You’re gonna give away our fuckin’ position.” 

“Kaner, if this is how I die,” Sharpy said, wiping away tears, “it’ll be _worth it._ ” 

***

It was Patrick’s first mission as part of Blackhawks Squad. Technically he wasn’t supposed to be out in the field at all, but after the first time Jonny had come back with a shrapnel wound in his arm ( _it was just a graze, Peeks, I’m fine,_ he’d said) he’d become a man possessed. So when Saader contracted dysentery and the boys were temporarily down a man, Patrick had gone to great pains to make himself conspicuously available. 

“Kane, you’re in,” was all he’d gotten from the Sarge, but it was plenty. A year ago if you’d told Patrick that he’d not only have enlisted but would be begging to be out in the field, he’d have told you to fuck off. Even now, it wasn’t exactly like he was itching to go; his insides felt like they’d been liquified as he loaded his pack that night. But what was he supposed to do? If it was up to him, Jonny wouldn’t get another _splinter_ in Vietnam. He wouldn’t even let himself think about anything more. Jonny had clamped a hand down on his before he’d even realized it was shaking. 

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” His voice was low, Bambi-eyes looking deep into his in the dim light of the barracks. Mostly everyone was packing up or laying in bed, shooting the shit, radio playing low in the background like static. Trying to relax and rest before leaving first thing the next morning.

“I mean, I’m committed now, right?” Patrick had joked, trying to manage a smile. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“There’s ways. Go throw up, say you caught dysentery from Saader.” 

“What, do you think that I can’t handle it?” Patrick had deflected.

“Jesus, Peeks, no. I know you can handle anything that gets thrown at you.” Jonny had smiled a little in spite of himself as he ran a hand over his face. His voice had been smaller when he spoke again. “I just… I’m already the reason you’re out here at all, and if something happened to you, if something happened to you _because of me--_ ” 

“Jon.” This time the smile had been real. “Do you realize how selfish I’m being right now? I’m going because I can’t stand staying here worrying about you. Now _you_ have to be out there worrying about me. So don’t think this is me trying to be some saint or something, okay? It's entirely for me.” Jonny had grinned back and gave him a little shove.

“Yeah, you’re right. You are an asshole.”

Patrick knew he wasn’t really out of the woods in terms of Jonny worrying, but the mission itself was a relatively simple one. There was a squad up in the central highlands that needed to be relieved. They provided security for a highly contested area outside Pleiku, though it had supposedly been quiet for a while. The Hawks would take over until further notice, which made Patrick especially glad he was going. Not knowing when Jonny would come back probably would’ve put him into medical even if he _didn’t_ get dysentery from Saader.

“So what happened to this squad that was so bad that they couldn’t do it anymore?” Patrick asked Shawzy one evening as they were hoofing it through the rice paddies. It was finally starting to cool down, though that was a relative term. They were exhausted, bringing up the rear, having hacked through the jungle most of the day. Soon they’d have to make camp for the night. 

“I’d tell you,” Shawzy said, “but you’d think I was lying.” 

“Well, you do have a reputation for being full of shit.” Patrick was wary but curious; Vietnam was full of weird stories. “But hit me.”

“Well, word is, their Sergeant defected. Not just went AWOL, but actually _defected._ Sergeant Sidney Crosby I think they said his name was? And he ran off to _Russia._ ” Patrick laughed.

“You were right, Mutt. I do think you’re full of shit.” 

“I’m not kidding you! The craziest part is, he ran off to be with some spy. A _male_ spy. A guy they call the Russian Bear.” 

“Wait,” Patrick said. “Like, gay?” 

“Like gay.” Shawzy nodded sagely. “So supposedly the Sarge commits treason, which isn’t great for group morale, one thing leads to another, the platoon falls apart and next thing you know they’re calling us in.”

“Damn.”

Patrick thought about it. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy. Would he defect for Jonny? The question immediately seemed stupid. Of course he would defect for Jonny. He’d already left his country for him once, what was leaving it permanently? Although he supposed it was possible he’d done that already without even knowing it.

***

“Fire in the hole!”

_BOOM._

Rocks and dirt flew overhead. The ground beneath him trembled. After a minute of listening to his ears ring, Patrick peeked over the sandbags. 

There stood Brinksy, grinning and giving him the thumbs up. He cracked open his beer in celebration. 

“Say, Sarge,” he called to Colliton, “this war thing isn’t so bad!” 

No, they weren’t under fire. They weren’t under siege, they weren’t in the midst of battle. They were a bunch of dumb kids, being a bunch of dumb kids, exploding all the bombs that had been left as booby traps around the village. Next to him Colliton was shaking his head.

“How did I know I was going to regret letting you detonate the landmines?” 

“Because we’re idiots?” Brinks said, coming to join Patrick, the Sarge and Stromer behind the sandbags. “Your turn, Dyls.” 

“No,” said Colliton. “No, no, no. The point of this was to detonate the bombs _safely,_ so we wouldn’t get _dismembered,_ not to have a fucking party and let everyone get a turn--”

“I want next!” Kirby called, sitting on the bridge over the stream behind them. 

“You don’t get a turn,” Nylander said from next to him. “You’re a medic.”

“Exactly! I never get to blow shit up!”

“Nobody is blowing shit up!” Colliton’s eyes were practically bugging out of his head, but nobody was listening. Somebody turned the radio up, and Patrick turned around to see Jonny with his hand on the dial, winking at him. The song was “Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)” and the beer was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Jonny was dancing like a dork. Crow was charming the villagers in fluent Vietnamese, bartering for rice after weeks of C-rations. Seabs was trying to catch a fish with his bare hands in the creek, Nylander and Kirby’s feet dangling above him in the kind early evening light. Even Duncs was smiling slightly. Patrick felt not hot but warm.

The first couple weeks pretty much went like that.

Of course, it wouldn’t always be like that, but for a moment in time it was. It was still the dry season, and the young guys didn’t yet know of the driving rains of the late summer or the diseases that would come with them. They hadn’t lost anybody yet, and even though they were aware it was a possibility, to them it still wasn’t more than that; they were still too close to the suburban immortality of their childhoods. The old guys who did know the way of things, Seabs and Duncs and even Colliton, who was actually the same age as Seabs and who had even served alongside him as a grunt, were more than happy to pretend. The war had gotten boring and the young guys were bringing it energy again. They knew how dangerous boredom could be, how it made some guys antsy and unpredictable and other guys careless, but really, that was besides the point. They were getting attached, against all their judgement and experience. The rookies had become like little brothers or sons to them, they let themselves believe that they could protect them. That these kids were different from the kids they’d come in with, because they themselves were now older and wiser and better equipped to protect the ones they loved. As though they had grown extra hands to use in firefights. As though they’d developed extra senses for detecting trip wires. They hadn’t, but the sense that they had allowed them a couple weeks respite outside Pleiku. 

***

Their roster was as follows:

Sergeant: Colliton

Lieutenant/bomb diffusion: Duncs

Interp: Jonny & Crow

Radio operator: Bur

Medic: Kirby

Chaplain: Seabs

Field reporter: Sharpy

Grunts: Nylander, Shawzy, Stromer, Brinks, and Patrick.

For two weeks, they watched over the village in shifts. They carried their guns with them but forgot to clean them. They slept soundly, even when they had to sleep during the day. They dug wells and passed out capitalist propaganda and did the kinds of things that news crews liked to put on TV. Under Crow’s tutelage, Patrick’s bilingual boyfriend became his _trilingual_ boyfriend, walking around learning slang from local kids who sat on his shoulders and stole his things and ran away from him giggling until he came after them. Patrick even made bamboo rods into makeshift hockey sticks so he and Jonny could teach the kids to play ball hockey in the streets. At nights on watch they’d talk about figuring out a way to have a family, like they were already practicing.

For the first two weeks. 

It all came crashing down to the sound of an explosion. It was late in the afternoon, half of them snapping out of lazy naps, and when the ground shook Patrick’s eyes shot over to Jonny he thought-- _this is it._

But it… wasn’t. The battle was short. Nobody even killed anyone. A couple of enemy soldiers had been staking out the location and had walked into one of their own land mines--they were already dead when the boys took position and started firing. Colliton said he suspected they were feelers testing the security of the area, meant to send back word of how many guys would need to be brought next time. _Well they’re gonna need a whole battalion to get through us,_ they boys had responded, cocky with a win they hadn’t earned. Never mind the fact that they had thought they’d already detonated all the land mines, that it could have just as easily been them who had been killed by it. Never mind that they hadn’t actually done anything. They were just happy to be alive, pumped full of adrenaline and high on their own survival and the facts of their bodies still planted on the earth. Endowed with all these fresh powers, they were even able to convince Colliton to let them into Pleiku for a night out.

“To the first of many victories!” Bur toasted.

“To the first of many victories!” 

They all raised their shots and washed them down with Vietnamese beer. The bar was dim and crowded, and they knew they were being charged more because they were American GI’s but they didn’t care. They had money to spend and if Colliton could keep them spending it on booze instead of girls, he was more than happy to. The last thing he needed was some nineteen year-old kid getting engaged because they saw their lives flash before their eyes that day.

“Duncs, you looked _so_ ready to go,” Kirby was saying, already sloshed. “Like, this was the moment you’d been _waiting_ for. They should call you _Commander_ Keith from now on.”

“Duncy boy here is always ready to go,” Seabs threw an arm around his best friend. “Careful what you say or you’ll end up lookin’ like those guys from earlier.”

“I dunno Seabs,” Duncs said, “Dacher here looked pretty terrifying out there today, I wouldn’t wanna mess with a kid who only runs a hundred yards in the opposite direction when a bomb goes off--” Patrick nearly shot beer out his nose.

“I did _not,_ ” Kirby shot back. “I was ready. I was so ready.” 

“You were not ready,” Brinks was shaking with laughter. “You were _so_ not ready.”

Getting them all back to camp afterwards was like herding cats. Very loud, emotional, testosterone-infused cats who seemed determined to vomit under every tree in Vietnam. 

Patrick had one arm around Jonny and the other around Bur when they stumbled back in. Half of the group was singing “Sweet Caroline” and half was chirping Jonny for not being from America, which they’d clearly proven that day was the greatest country on Earth. Patrick felt a surge of affection well up in him. How the fuck did he get here? How the fuck did he currently have his arm around probably the most attractive guy ever, who had the nerve to look _like that_ even when sweaty and drunk and lit primarily by moonlight? A year ago he’d been on the wall at Prom, and now here he was, literally and figuratively an ocean away. Suddenly he needed to be much nearer to Jonny than he could possibly be in the company of others.

“Shit,” Colliton said. Patrick had never heard the Sarge cuss before. “Somebody has to take watch.” 

“We’ll go. Jonny and I will go,” Patrick said, causing Jonny to elbow him in the stomach. “What?” he hissed. “We’re totally normal.” 

Not even the Sergeant was sober enough to notice how ridiculous they were being. They made their way to the outpost, giggling and grabbing as the noise of the group receded in the distance.

“Somebody’s feeling reckless tonight, eh?” Jonny teased as he climbed into the foxhole and Patrick climbed on top of him.

“I don’t know if you know this, Jon,” Patrick buried his face in Jonny’s neck and just _breathed,_ shit that was good, “but nothing bad can happen to us. We’re basically immortal.”

“Yeah, that’s not true at all.”

“What else could happen today? We already got in a firefight. And nobody is drunk enough--”

“I think you mean sober enough,” Jonny corrected, pinching Patrick’s sides and sliding his hands down to his ass.

“Nobody is sober enough to pay any attention to us.”

“Whatever you say, babe.” Jonny inhaled sharply as Patrick pressed his palm to Jonny’s dick. “Fuck, I don’t care. Fuck it, do whatever you want to me.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Jonny could act like he was in control all he wanted, but Patrick knew the score. A side effect of stealing glances at Jonny all the time was that he usually caught it when Jonny was stealing glances at him. He knew what watching him bend over to load sandbags did to Jonny; knew how he looked with his shirt off and the sun bleaching his hair and yeah, maybe he preened a bit when he knew he was being watched. Maybe he liked driving his boyfriend crazy. So sue him. And now he was a little or a lot drunk and he still couldn’t really believe he was alive and he wanted to taste every inch of Jonny just to test if they were all the same because how could he die without knowing? He wanted to leave his mark on that beautiful skin. Show that Jonny was just as much his as he was obviously Jonny’s.

“Let’s get matching tattoos,” Patrick said, grinning into Jonny’s neck. He peeled his shirt off so he could make his way down to the collarbone, across the chest and back up again.

“Sure, Peeks. We’ll get matching tattoos,” Jonny was smiling back, Patrick could feel it in how his jaw shifted. _Fuck,_ that beautiful jaw of his.

“Us and the rest of the Hawks,” Patrick said. Jonny sat up.

“I thought you meant just us. That’s not very romantic.”

“Well we’ll all go, and then when everyone else leaves we’ll stay and get a set of our own. Calm down, baby.” Jonny shifted down again, going back to being liquidy and pliable and smiley as Patrick kissed him and turned his attention to the lower half of Jonny’s body.

“What the _fuck._ ” 

The voice wasn’t Patrick’s. It wasn’t Jonny’s. It was the voice of the Sergeant.

They both scrambled up. Patrick didn’t think he’d sobered up this quickly since the time he and Jonny had fought in his dorm room. It was the only thing he could think of, mind flashing back blindly to how he’d thought at the time that that was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. He didn’t dare look at Jonny, shirtless Jonny who now looked ridiculous, who would probably never again put on a shirt as a member of the US Army. Jonny, who was about to be dishonorably discharged, at the very least, because of him. Patrick didn’t want to know what he looked like as that happened.

Colliton approached them slowly. As always, he seemed coiled tightly, like a mountain lion. With them still in the foxhole he towered above them, dark hair glistening in the slim amount of light. Patrick felt a wave of hot shame--the shame only Jonny had ever been able to take away--flooding back, as powerfully and cripplingly as if it had never left.

“You both know,” Colliton said quietly, “that you could be discharged for this, right?”

Neither of them said anything.

“You do realize--” his voice had raised but he lowered it again, “that you could be killed for a myriad of reasons right now, not the least of which is because _clearly_ you weren’t actually performing your duties?”

Not even Jonny had an answer to that.

“And I am _certain_ you are aware that if I was _anyone else_ you’d both be looking down the barrel of a blue discharge and a one way ticket back to the states, where in all likelihood neither of you could ever get jobs again?”

A moment of silence.

“ _If you were anyone else_ ,” Jonny repeated, sounding numb. “You’re not reporting us.”

“No, I’m not.” Colliton sounded exhausted. In fact, in that moment, he somehow sounded the same way Tyler had, way back in Dallas, when he’d talked about how dangerous it was to be in a gay bar in Texas. “You’re lucky this war needs bodies. You’re probably the only ones who are lucky this war needs bodies.” The statement hung in the air before Colliton seemed to remember himself. “Pay some fucking attention. Somebody will be here to relieve you in a couple hours.”

And with that, he disappeared back into the night. 

When they eventually sat back down, this time back-to-back like they were supposed to be, Patrick could feel his body shaking against Jonny’s. More adrenaline was coursing through him than had after the firefight that day. And even as Jonny soothed his fingers over Patrick’s, repeating quietly that they were okay, he realized that he was confused. So far, the worst thing that had happened to him in the war was the possibility that he might have been sent away from it. So why, when he’d decided to let them stay, had Colliton acted like he was sentencing them to death?

He would find out. The war wasn’t always going to be Budweiser and kind villagers. And years later, he would think about that moment and all the things he had yet to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Joe Cocker's version of "With A Little Help From My Friends" which would be the soundtrack to most of this chapter.
> 
> This chapter took a long time to write even though it's small, mostly because I actually am going through a military application myself! So that can be pretty time consuming. A lot of hurry up and wait. Also all Hawks news is pretty depressing right now for the most part, so I've been consuming a healthy diet of fluff, fluff, and only fluff. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always! Next one will be quicker. Only a few more chapters to go! I hope you guys still like it.


	8. A Day of Rest and Relaxation in Saigon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three meals over a day of R&R in Saigon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the Jonny's Feelings Chapter! Hope you enjoy!

_ July 1970 _

_ Saigon, Vietnam _

_ Breakfast _

Two months later, stretching against the hotel sheets of his first R&R leave in Saigon, Patrick had forgotten everything except the question of when his boyfriend was going to be back with breakfast.

It was still early enough that the heat hadn’t yet invaded their room. Jonny had insisted on opening the windows, and even though Patrick had grumbled at the time, he luxuriated in the light now. Fuck if he’d ever say this, but when Jonny was right, he was right. The light was soft, and yellow-white, and dappled through the leaves of the trees that seemed to grow everywhere here. Vietnam was an early-rising country, and the sounds of people negotiating and the smells of street food filtered up through those same leaves. He wondered if, if he really strained, he could hear Jonny’s voice as part of that muffled chorus. 

A lot of days, being loved by Jonathan Toews was like the intensity of a sprint stretched over the length of a marathon. Which Patrick loved--clearly. But every once in a while Jonny’s shoulders would unknit a little and he would breathe deeply and it was like this: lazy. Cozy. Warm, not hot. Safe and secure, held even when he wasn’t physically present. There was nobody more reliable than Jonathan Toews, nobody more consistent, more passionate, more constant in his care, and it made it so easy sometimes. It was easy to trust Jonny with his whole self. It was easy to relax when you were in his capable hands. And more importantly, on mornings like this one, it was easy to trust him with breakfast.

The door opened and shut softly, and when Patrick rolled over Jonny was smiling over him, paper bag in hand. Patrick smiled back.

“Didn’t realize ordering room service included a hot piece of ass,” Patrick said. Jonny rolled his eyes fondly and nudged Patrick over.

“Good morning to you, too. Scoot over, I don’t wanna drop hot soup on you.”

“Soup?”

They settled themselves next to each other on the bed and distributed the styrofoam containers.

“Well, noodles really,” Jonny said. “Best breakfast the pho cart outside had to offer.” 

Patrick hummed and tucked into his soup. The noodles were surprisingly light, somehow comforting and energizing at the same time, not like the heavy pseudo-Italian pasta they had at home. Not the kind of thing he’d expected to learn from war, but the world was full of surprises. Jonny was full of surprises. 

“Y’know,” Patrick said, mouth full of beef and sprouts, “I could get used to this. You bringing me gourmet meals in bed every day.” 

“If you think these are good, you’re gonna love where I’m taking you for dinner. Best noodles you’ve ever had.” Patrick rolled his eyes.

“You’ve been in country like, one month longer than I have. I don’t know why you always act like you’re so wise and sage.”

“Have you been anywhere outside base by yourself?” 

Patrick just grumbled.  _ No,  _ but still. Jonny laughed at the non-answer.

“Get over it,” he said. “It’ll be worth it, promise.” 

Patrick sipped the last of his broth. He’d never heard of having pho for breakfast, but it wasn’t a tradition he was mad about. Jonny set their containers on the nightstand and Patrick settled on his chest. If he tilted his head just so he could hear Jonny’s heart, but he was too comfortable to move to do so. 

“Do you ever think about where we were this time last year?” Patrick asked, playing with Jonny’s fingers absently.

“Mm, sometimes. You keep me pretty fuckin’ occupied in the moment, though. So  _ needy. _ ”

“Thanks, babe. I try.” Patrick smiled as Jonny kissed his hair. “I mean, isn’t it weird though? That a little over a year ago, you were just a cute guy I stared at in French class?”

“Est-ce pour ça que ton français est si mauvais, mon amour?” Jonny said.

“Thanks, dick. Translation, please?”

“I asked if that was why your French was so bad.”

“Okay, fuck you  _ and  _ your perfect French.”

Jonny laughed and tried to pull Patrick to him, but Patrick was fighting back by this point, wrestling to try and pin Jonny down; they were occupied enough that they didn’t even notice when outside, it started to rain.

***

_ Lunch _

“Fuck, when did it start raining?” Jonny had just emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered, rubbing a towel through his hair distractedly. Another towel was slung low around his hips, the taut planes of his stomach disappearing beneath what was, in Patrick’s opinion, clearly too much fabric.

“No idea,” Patrick said. “Guess we’ll just have to stay in all day.” Jonny frowned.

“But I was going to take you to that restaurant.”

“We’ll go next time. It's like we’ll never be in Saigon again.”

“I feel like you might get hungry at some point, babe.” 

“Could always eat something else,” Patrick said, too distracted to come up with a good line. Jonny smirked and approached the bed.

“Didn’t we just do that?”

“Did we? You were in the shower so  _ long. _ ” 

Patrick turned his eyes up to full wattage, batting the lashes he hoped he was looking up through. His hair had gotten long since they’d been out in the field, and if he was deliberately letting a curl hang in his face, so what? If Jonny could let his dog tags hang down on his chest like that, Patrick could use his own weapons. 

“Oh baby, did I neglect you?” Jonny swung a thick thigh on either side of Patrick’s calves, stretching out over him, bracing himself with a hand on the headboard next to Patrick. The thick cordage of Jonny’s forearm was close enough to bite if he wanted to, and when Jonny spoke next, his breath floated over Patrick’s ear. “Didn’t mean to. Anything I can do to make it up to you?” 

“Maybe. I’d have to think about it.” The corner of Patrick’s mouth picked up in a smile as Jonny went to work on his neck.

“Yeah, Peeks. Okay. You just keep thinking about it.”

***

An hour or two later, Patrick’s mind had been cleared enough to wander back to their earlier conversation.

“I mean, really. A year ago I couldn’t even conceive of holding your hand and now I know what your balls taste like.” 

Johnny shoved a piece of bread in his mouth.

“I deserved that,” Patrick said, words muffled. He swallowed. “More wine, please.”

He was stretched out on his back on the floor, hands folded behind his head, feet crossed on the hardwood. Neither of them were exactly sure what time it was. The sound of the rain washing down the side of the hotel provided an unending metronome, an unrelenting rhythm. They were making use of what they had, Jonny feeding him last night’s leftover baguette and occasionally pouring him a bit of wine. The colonization the French had done here was pretty fucking awful, but Patrick couldn’t help but be grateful for the strange fusion of cuisine it had produced. He was no expert, but it seemed like the Vietnamese could make bread with the best of them.

“All the sex stuff aside,” Patrick said, “It’s still pretty crazy how fast we got to know each other.” 

“Yeah, well.” Jonny took a sip of the wine and leaned back on his hands. His face seemed to cloud. “It’s been an eventful year.”

“I mean, yeah. We graduated, went to Dallas, got together, I went to college, you got drafted, we… Whatever we did, it doesn’t matter now.” Patrick hesitated and stared back up at the ceiling. They’d never really addressed what had happened. “It doesn’t matter now, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jonny said quickly. “Just some parts of me I wish you hadn’t had to see, that’s all.” When Patrick looked back at him his mouth was set in a hard line, turning his head to squint towards the windows. By now Patrick understood perfectly why Jonny wouldn’t look at him when he was upset. What the guys said was true--he really  _ didn’t _ have a poker face. If he focused his attention on you, there would be no way for him to hide how he felt.

Patrick sat up, turning around so he was kneeling in front of Jonny. Sitting on his heels, he was almost taller than him. 

“But we’re together now, right? And that’s not changing any time soon, even if it took us a while to get here. And it's not like I was always my best, either.” Patrick’s mouth went dry as the memories flooded in. He looked down. “I mean, I was so stupid, I would’ve let you go to  _ war _ without ever speaking to you again.” 

Patrick felt a hand gently turn his face back up.

“Hey,” Jonny said. “I put you in a shit position. You had every right to never speak to me again. I thought it was over, and on my way here I had this feeling like I’d made a horrible mistake, that I’d put something so  _ stupid  _ above the one thing that mattered most…” Jonny trailed off. He was so good at leading, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t fearless. So set in his decisions, it didn’t occur to Patrick that he’d ever second-guessed them. And he so enjoyed taking care of Patrick, it sometimes slipped his mind that Jonny needed to be taken care of, too. Patrick reached over to the bread and broke a piece off. Outside, thunder rumbled deep and steady through the city. Gently, he lifted it to Jonny’s lips, which parted obediently. After, Patrick ran a thumb over Jon’s bottom lip, sliding away a crumb, drinking in the softness.

“I would’ve followed you to hell, Jon,” he said simply. “You never have to worry about me.” 

Jonny’s eyes were dark, rings of brown around blown-out pupils. Patrick leaned forward, meeting him in a kiss that melted on impact like a snowflake on your tongue. He felt fingers slide up through his hair, anchoring their faces even as time flowed around them with the rain. Jonny so seldom felt fragile, but Patrick could feel it radiating off of him, the lingering fear that he could’ve driven Patrick away, that something he’d done had broken them beyond repair. But what they had wasn’t something that could break--it was like water, like ice--occasionally it might be shattered, but it would simply melt and reform into something new but also the same. They would do the work to reform it. 

Patrick pushed forward again, helping Jonny to lie down on the floor. He felt the gasp when he bit softly into his throat. He felt the furnace of his skin jump as he pulled off their shirts so they were chest to chest. He felt how Jonny’s hand trembled as it reached for his, clasping together when Patrick, between moments of suction, whispered in his ear,  _ Where you go I go. I trust you to take me there. And you can trust me, because we take care of each other.  _

Usually Patrick kissed Jonny selfishly, devoured first and thought later. But in that moment, pushing gently with his lips, cradling Jonny’s cheek the same way Jonny usually held his, he tried to be intentional. He tried to convey the depth of his need, how loving him wasn’t a choice Patrick had made, but how he  _ would  _ make the choice to always do it better. That he was a sure thing, gone beyond all hope, that there was nothing to be afraid of with him. He tried to say,  _ I’m here for what you need, too.  _ He tried to tell him,  _ there’s nothing you could do that would make me stay away.  _

***

_ Dinner _

“You’re really going to make me leave this room, aren’t you?” Patrick asked, even as he was putting on his shoes. He knew he was being dramatic, but he was a bottom, and he knew he’d done very well today, so he kind of thought it was his right. 

“You’ll thank me later,” Jonny called back from the bathroom where he was getting ready to leave. And he called  _ Patrick  _ a queen, Jesus. A full day of fucking and feelings had left Patrick hungry and impatient, and now on top of it he was bored. He wandered over to lean against the bathroom door.

“So what  _ did  _ you think about, in the beginning? You know, way back when you were a jock and I was just a nerd in the back of the class.”

“Are you asking if I thought you were hot? Because I definitely thought you were hot.” 

Patrick felt his impatience melt a little with fondness, and as usual he was smiling when he rolled his eyes.

“No. Like… I don’t know. Did you notice me? What about when we met?”

“You want a serious answer?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Jonny, who until that moment had been running some grease through his hair in the mirror, sighed and seemed to resign himself to actually having a serious conversation. He turned toward Patrick, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink.

“Before we met, like,  _ properly,  _ I went to great pains  _ not  _ to notice you. There was no chance of me ever being with you, so no sense getting lost in those baby blues, you know?” Patrick felt his heart squeeze a little, with the confliction of knowing Jonny had liked him, and of the pain it had caused him. Jonny turned back to the mirror and started buttoning up his shirt. “It just hurt too much to look at anybody, and besides that it was dangerous. So I tried not to. I went to dances, did the whole thing, hooked up with girls, or tried to. But then at Prom it was just all too much, years of it just building up, and I just had to escape or I thought I was gonna stop fucking breathing. And when I did, you were there.”

“I was there,” Patrick echoed. Jonny’s eyes darted up to meet his in the reflection, corner of his mouth tugging up a little before he went on.

“Yeah, you were there. And it was like I could finally breathe again, and how could I give that up? I had to see you again. So we became friends. And then I  _ knew  _ I was being too much, too forward, too clingy, but I couldn’t stop myself. I just couldn’t stay away from you, Peeks.”

Patrick came forward quietly and wrapped himself around Jonny’s back. He leaned his cheek against the curve of his spine, felt the deep breath Jonny took and let out.

“But the longer we hung out the scarier it got, ‘cause I was afraid I was gonna do something stupid and then you’d hate me or out me or tell me you never wanted to see me again.”

“You couldn’t tell that I was in love with you, too?” Patrick asked. Jonny chuckled.

“No, Peeks. I couldn’t tell that you were in love with me, too. You were so quiet, so reserved.”

“There was a reason for that,” Patrick deadpanned.

“Well I know that now, obviously. But I figured I was so obvious, that if you didn’t know, it was because you didn’t want to.”

“But you were so out of my league. Maybe a part of me suspected, but I thought it was way too good to be true.” Patrick thought a minute. “You’re still too good to be true.”

Jonny turned in his arms, eyes full of fondness as he brushed a curl out of Patrick’s face. 

“You say that, but I  _ am _ about to make you leave this room,” he joked, the tension dissolving into a sweet and heady peace.

“Ugh, you’re right. Maybe I should go AWOL and ditch your ass in Saigon.”

“How many times in your life are you going to be eating dinner in a foreign country? Huh?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, babe, but we eat dinner in a foreign country every night.”

“ _ Rations  _ are not the same as  _ dinner. _ You won’t regret it.” 

“You promise these noodles are better than homemade?”

“Does it really matter? You said you’d  _ follow me anywhere, _ ” Jonny teased while Patrick glared. “Come on, let’s go. I’m fucking starved.”

So he followed Jonny down the steps, feeling unburdened, light enough to be floating. Jonny was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved button-up; he looked so clean-cut and lovely, part of Patrick was almost tempted to believe he was the same kid he’d pined over a year ago.

When they emerged from the hotel, Patrick had a feeling they’d been in there days instead of hours. They were at a six-way intersection and the street was a wide river of vehicles and people. The tight fist of dark clouds was receding to the West, a light indigo now tinged with pink. The sky was that kind of late-evening lavender, a watercolor wash of color freshened by the rain. Jets of pink light streamed from behind the clouds, and the motorbikes all sped by through them, streaking the paint of the sunset everywhere.

Vietnam really was a beautiful country.

They were about to cross the street when they were approached by a small military courier. 

“Hey, you’re a GI, right?” he said to Jonny.

“Yeah, why?” The kid held out a paper.

“Would you deliver this for me? Telegram for Privates Kane and Toews, was supposed to be delivered there.”

“I’ll make sure they get it.” Jonny took the telegram, waiting until the courier had left to open it. Patrick was about to complain about how it was addressed to  _ both  _ of them, but something in Jonny’s face stopped him. Something in Jonny’s face stopped his heart completely. The telegram slipped from his hands to the wet ground, and Patrick scrambled to pick it up.

_ PVT. PATRICK SHARP DEAD _

_ REPORT BACK TO CAMP IMMEDIATELY _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I heavily debated the ethics of killing off a character who ostensibly is like, based on a real person. But this is a Vietnam War fic, and at the end of the day it feels weird/kinda wrong to not have anything bad happen? I think it would be kind of dismissive if nobody died. Obviously nothing but love for the real Patrick Sharp, clearly I love him, it just had to be him for the sake of the narrative and lets be honest, Sharpy is too pretty for this world anyway <3
> 
> As always, so many thanks for reading and for comments! Hope you enjoyed the fluff and feelings, it's the last there will be for a while!


	9. If This Was a Gritty War Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things that Patrick might have told you if you were looking to hear a real war story, but that he won't, because you're not, because trust him, you don't want to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: this chapter gets a little graphic with the war stuff. I tried to keep it relatively lowkey, and I think saying there's graphic descriptions of violence is kind of a stretch but I also have a hard time viewing my work objectively right after I've written it. So I might be overthinking it but who knows! If this is an issue for you, you can skip to the end notes and it'll tell you what you need to know <3

_August 1970_

_North Vietnam_

If this were a gritty war story, it would include a long section about what happened next.

It would include a section about getting back to the camp and having Sharpy not be there. It would detail the silence of the bunk, and the silence of the guys, and how having the cot next to his was different now. His pack stayed on his cot, where Patrick would stare at it instead of sleeping, and it would stay there until eventually a new guy got assigned to the bed. The poor new kid, shiny and dumb and fresh off the plane, had the misfortune of moving the pack, and worse, setting it on the dirt floor--and so he had the additional misfortune of starting his career in Vietnam with a jaw broken by Adam Burish. Patrick took a sick pride in saying he would’ve done the same thing, but then he remembered the way he had been welcomed into the fold, and thought about how it wasn’t that way for this kid, and he knew nothing would ever be the same.

If this was a gritty war story it would include the parts where Crow and Saader and Caggs were reassigned to different companies. The squad hardly needed two interpreters, after all, and Crow had trained Jonny so well he’d pretty much ensured his fate. Why Saader and Caggs got sent up North they were never quite sure, except that maybe things had started falling apart and the higher-ups were attempting to punish them. 

A glorious war story would make a really big deal out of Jonny getting promoted straight to Sergeant after Colliton left, leapfrogging over Duncs and skipping Lieutenant altogether. Not that he wanted the position particularly--but glory doesn’t care, does it? It would skip over the parts where Jonny didn’t know what the fuck he was doing and didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be part of this but now felt like he _had_ to be and how he wasn’t exactly wrong. It would ignore the parts where he stopped eating and stopped sleeping and stopped talking to anyone who didn’t have a map in their hands. Including Patrick. Patrick was afraid his hair was falling out, but he couldn’t get close enough to check.

If Patrick were telling this story to anyone at all, it would probably be pertinent to mention the long stretches of time the boys spent pretending they didn’t hear each other waking up panicked in the night, waking everyone else up even when they couldn’t afford to make noise. How each guy had someone unspokenly designated to quiet them--Brinks for Stromer, Duncs for Seabs, Patrick for Jonny and so on--except for the guys whose buddy was gone. And then in the morning they would all forget it. Forgetting it wasn’t just the polite thing to do, but a matter of survival, because how could you chirp a guy during the day when you knew what he saw at night? And if you couldn’t chirp then you couldn’t tell a guy you loved him, but worse than that, then you couldn’t laugh. And if you couldn’t laugh you could never be comfortable, and if you were always tense then you became Jonny--or worse, you were dead. 

A gritty war story would take you detail through detail through all the things that Patrick was intent on forgetting, all the things he would bury under layer after layer of bullshit just to be able to get a decent night’s sleep. It would detail the rains, the leeches, the hunger, the battles, the boredom, the aches, the pains, the weight of his weapon strapped to his back. But Patrick couldn’t tell you those details, because he didn’t remember them. He couldn’t remember them, because the human brain is built to survive, and occasionally that particular trick of evolution involves a merciful amnesia.

There were a few details he could remember, but he tried to keep busy for that reason.

Sometimes the details were seemingly innocuous things--like how thick Boquer’s accent got when he was upset. There was a night, late into Patrick’s stint, when things were really going downhill and they’d been at the base for a night--just one night, since they were there less and less frequently all the time--so they were trying to enjoy it. Enjoy seeing their old buddies from other squads, enjoying sleeping under a real roof and eating from a kitchen and having the radio on and all that good stuff. They’d been hanging out, playing cards with the available guys when a guy from Blue Jackets Squad poked a head in and said that the Commander had asked to see Adam. 

They’d all _ooh-_ ed like a chorus of sixth graders, tossing cigarette butts and chirps at Adam about how the principal wanted to see him now. He’d torn himself away from Kirby’s side, smiling and taking it all good-naturedly, and he still hadn’t been back fifteen minutes later when Patrick set off across camp to grab something from the kitchen.

Yeah, it was the sound of that accent that caught him--unmistakeable, a calling card that grabbed his ear as he walked past the Commander’s tent. 

“No, you don’t understand,” Adam was saying, stopping Patrick where he stood. He shouldn’t have been listening, but he couldn’t make himself move. “I’m a _medical chopper_ pilot, I airlift guys who are _hurt,_ I don’t drop bombs, I’m not that guy--”

“You’re a pilot in the United States Army, son. I’ve been told you’re one of the best we have and you’ll pilot what I goddamn tell you to.”

Patrick never did forget that particular detail, probably because he was reminded of it a month later, when Adam was kicked back to the base for permanent desk duty. He was reminded of it by the look in Adam’s eye that never really left after that, only got distant on the occasion that they were back on base and he could put his head in Kirby’s lap and let him run his fingers through his hair. That’s how bad it was, that “that gay shit” was allowed to happen with only minimal grumbling from guys who weren’t in their squad and didn’t know how Adam used to be. 

The story probably should’ve included all the guys they lost. But that same merciful amnesia of Patrick’s memory had been less merciful to them, just like the war had been less merciful to them, and so in his mind their names had mostly been edited out.

The most honest story would be about how they loved each other, all of them, in a way they were not supposed to have loved each other because it was detrimental to their survival. How Bur never really got over what happened to Sharpy. How Patrick couldn’t bring himself to ask what it was that had happened. How Duncs only smiled with Seabs but got himself a shrapnel wound pushing Stromer out of the way. How Shawzy gave Patrick his last cigarette one night in the field and cupped his hands around it in the rain so he could smoke it. Those weren’t stories that got told, not to wives and not to each other and not really even to themselves, because part of them recognized how wrong it would be to wrap words around that kind of bond. How cheap it was to reach for words stronger than “buddies.” How it would be sacrilege, even to guys who wouldn’t have known what that word meant if you spelled it out for them.

Patrick had very nearly had none of these war stories at all, since Jonny did his best to get him assigned permanently to the base. Now _that_ was probably one the others remembered well--the screaming match when Patrick found out, the one no tent or tin-walled barrack could block out. But it didn’t matter anyway. There was nothing Jonny could do. Colliton had been right when he’d said the war needed bodies. Patrick the Mechanic could be replaced, but Patrick Who Had Field Experience, not so much.

If you were looking for a real war story, the kind that would later get directed by big-name movie directors looking to throw a little dirt in their oeuvre, you would ask Patrick about the time they were pinned under machine gun fire in Cambodia and Brinks got shot in the shoulder. Cambodia was a hotbed of horrible at the time and maybe it was because Jonny was new or because Brinks was so small they really just felt like he _needed_ all his blood, but they had called Adam to come in and airlift him out. The shelling hadn’t died down by the time the helicopter got there, and even the youngest pilot in the US Army, the one so good he’d been put back in the field when he clearly didn’t belong there, couldn’t have maneuvered around it. Damn if he didn’t try though--and he’d kept trying right up until he lost control and the chopper ended up slamming into the ground face-first, tail in the air.

There was no survival instinct strong enough to erase the sound Kirby had made as he’d run into the wreckage after him, or the sound of Seabs screaming at him not to. Nothing could erase the orange of the burning copter, or the image of the two of them being airlifted out together an hour later, neither of them moving but both of their hands clasped together so tightly the knuckles were white, the only sign of life.

But this wouldn’t have been the best story Patrick had to tell, if your criteria was emotion, or _grit,_ whatever the fuck that was, grit like sand so it got everywhere and crunched in your teeth so you’d be spitting it out for weeks. It would be years before Patrick could spit this particular story out, try and get the taste out of his mouth before he realized that he didn’t know what it would taste like without it anymore.

The story someone would probably want to know the most would be about the time, midway through a firefight drenched by rain and lit by flares, he’d heard a noise and looked over and realized Jonny had been shot in the right arm.

But Patrick wasn’t in the business of telling that story. This wasn’t that story.

If this were _that_ war story, it would require Patrick to find a way to describe what Jonny’s face looked like, staring at Patrick as he seemed to realize what had happened. This could never be a gritty war story, because stories have to be told by someone, and maybe someone would have been able to find words for that, but Patrick sure couldn’t.

He didn’t have words for how the amount of blood someone lost seemed like, well, _more_ when it was rushing out of them. No words for Jonny asking him not to leave him even as he ran to radio for the chopper he hoped would save him. He didn’t have words for the moment it touched down, or the moment he and Jonny both realized only one of them was getting on it.

There were no words for it. How he looked up and watched the chopper disappear against the full moon. How once it was gone, he saw behind it a constellation they’d located together in Dallas and his brain involuntarily identified it. How it--the constellation, and the moon, and Jonny, were now, he was afraid, all the same distance away.

But this wasn’t a gritty war story. It was just a collection of things Patrick sometimes told his nieces, when they were older, if they asked. It was something that came up at AA, sometimes. It was a story he told himself, occasionally, on cold, long nights when Jonny seemed again to be as far away as the moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it's not inappropriate or too dark to have Jonny be shot. Originally he was going to die altogether so this seemed like a fair compromise?
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> also from the TW: basically lots of things happen, but the only one that really matters is that Jonny gets shot in a firefight and has to be airlifted out. What do we know beyond that? Basically nothing!


	10. Let It Bleed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: this chapter deals heavily with trauma and addiction, but I hope in a way that feels true.

_ November 1970 _

_ Chicago, Illinois _

Patrick got sent home a couple months after that.

He was high on just a little bit of morphine when he was shot in the foot, so he only halfway registered it happening. It was far from the most affecting thing that happened to him in the war. It wasn’t the big emotional climax that you’d think leaving would be. Patrick had ensured there would be no big climax when he started taking the morphine, which the medic they got after Kirby gave him freely, and after which nothing was emotional and everything was fuzzy. When he thought about it later, he realized he’d been a little bit high ever since he got the letter about how they could save Jonny, but not his arm.

So he went into battle like he did everything now, which was high, and got shot in the foot and had it patched up and he was sent home in about a week. And then suddenly he was standing in front of the airport, holding his duffle, back on United States soil, in jeans and sandals so his foot bandages could breathe even though it was barely thirty degrees in Chicago. 

“Patrick!” 

He was drawn into a hug by his aunt, and then Jackie, and a light pat on the shoulder by his uncle. He’d taken some pills on the plane, but he was starting to come out of them now, and he felt like he was suddenly coming to after a weeklong bender. It was strange, like waking up, but in slow motion while everyone talked at you like they expected you to be talking back. It happened over the course of the drive home, and the dinner after, right up until the moment he collapsed into bed. It picked back up when he woke up at four in the morning, too, when he finally felt clear. 

“Jackie,” he whispered, poking her awake. He was crouched by her bed, like he’d done when he was fourteen and had just moved here and felt like he was ten. 

“Patrick?” She blinked through waking up. It seemed to only take her ten seconds, and not all day like him. “What are you doing in here?”

“Where’s Jonny?” 

“Pat, it's four in the morning.” 

“Yeah, I know. But it's four in the afternoon in Vietnam.” He poked her again. He felt the most focused he had in months, and he had to stay on the question at hand. “Where’s Jonny?”

Jackie sighed and sat up, scooting over to make room for him. He crawled into the bed and sat next to her, like he hadn’t since they were kids. She leaned over to her nightstand and handed him a phone number. 

“He went back to Canada. His mom passed while you guys were over there, and his family has a little cabin up by a lake, so he decided to go back. He came by about a week ago to ask if we’d heard anything about you, since he said you weren’t answering his letters, and to give me this. It's the phone number of the cabin. He said to call him.” 

Patrick looked at the numbers. Ten precious digits to connect him to Jonny.

“Pat,” Jackie drew a big inhale. “The two of you… Was that… something? I don’t mean to accuse you or anything, I love you, it's just…” 

“He’s the love of my life, Jacks,” Patrick said simply. “I’m going to Canada to be with him.”

“Oh. Okay. I mean, I always had a feeling something was… but… okay.” She was looking at him like he was crazy, but he was just too emotionally tired and too physically wired to waste energy lying to one of the few people he loved left. If they were asking point-blank, that is. “Are you feeling okay?”

“No, but I’ll be alright.”

“Okay.” She was still looking at him funny, but he was too distracted working out the logistics in his head to notice. “Do you want a cigarette?”

“Sure. Thanks, Jacks.”

So they sat in bed and smoked until morning, and all the while Patrick plotted his escape.

***

The only good thing to come out of what had happened to Jonny was that nobody questioned the move. When Patrick informed his family that he was moving into a four-room cabin in Nowhere, Canada with his “good friend”, they chalked it up to Jonny needing a caretaker. Which of course Jonny would hate if he knew. Probably  _ did  _ know, at some level. But everyone seemed to take it on faith that they were just weird vets doing weird vet things, like a lot of guys coming back, and that Jonny certainly couldn’t do things for himself anymore and maybe Patrick couldn’t either. He could tell that’s what they thought by the way they looked at the floor when they said,  _ it’ll be good for you.  _

Which was how Patrick and his single suitcase ended up on their way to the Great White North, speeding down a highway lined with pine trees, sweating out a fever that could’ve been the last dredges of a hangover or the early onset of withdrawal. He wasn’t sure how he would know, but he did understand why they called it cold turkey. He understood it fucking perfectly, he thought, hunched on his hands and knees on the side of the road, sweat dripping off him into the snow. 

Which, then, was how he ended up sitting at a bar called The Last Stop Before the Border, mumbling a request for whiskey, rocks. Stewing in the shame that he couldn’t even do this one thing for Jonny, couldn’t show up sober and clear-headed and ready to tell him how much he’d missed him, how the hole where Jonny had been was bigger than the bullet hole he carried and more painful, too. But he couldn’t say any of that with his hands trembling and the sky closing in on him, so here he was. It was how he ended up taking that drink in a sip at a time until he found the amount where he thought his hands were steady enough to drive. It was how he ended up stopping at the liquor store next, forking over good government-paycheck money to line his bag with enough bottles to deliver him over the border. Just enough to launch him over that line, he told himself, running a clammy hand through his curls, and then he’d be with Jonny and it would be  _ different.  _

He wasn’t wrong, exactly. It was… different. Not at first. At first, it was everything it had always been and more. 

“ _ Patrick, _ ” Jonny had said when Patrick pulled up to the cabin. He’d gotten there in the late afternoon, and the golden winter sun had haloed Jonny’s face so it was almost blinding, not that Patrick could see with his eyes buried in Jonny’s neck. He was really there and they were really together. For a moment all the substances seemed to flush from his system, and it was even sweeter than the first time they’d kissed, or than the first time they’d reunited in Vietnam. They kept having to find each other, again and again, reconciling and getting separated and reconciling again. But Patrick just couldn’t stop chasing him down. When they parted, Patrick kissed him like he’d wanted to when they first met in Vietnam. 

“Hi,” he said. Jonny smiled, hand resting in the tears on Patrick’s cheek. If he couldn’t believe he could touch him, the feeling was mutual.

“Hi.”

“Miss me?” Patrick asked. Jonny just shrugged, letting his fond eyes do the talking. His pretty brow furrowed, though, as his eyes flitted over Patrick’s face. 

“You okay, baby?” he said.

“Yeah, just still a little jetlagged,” Patrick lied. “I don’t know if you heard, but I just got back from Vietnam.” 

“Oh, really? Someone should thank you for your service.”   
  


“Someone? Oh gosh I wonder who?” Patrick giggled as Jonny grabbed his ass and ushered him inside, suitcase forgotten in the car until after the sun had gone down. 

***

The withdrawal didn’t set in again until that night.

They were laying in the living room of the cabin, Jonny propped up on his elbow on the couch as Patrick flipped through his record collection and judged him. The fireplace was lit, complimenting the warm tones of Jonny’s skin, and the cabin was small enough that the quiet music was enough to fill the room. Books lined the walls, surrounding the wide windows that looked out over the lake, except for the West wall, which segued into the small semblance of a kitchen. There were two bedrooms, which was good for optics, because they’d both had enough of taking chances. The rug was soft and Patrick’s sex-exhausted body seemed liable to melt into it. This was the furthest he’d been from Jonny all day, separating only to put on coffee or cook some fish Jonny had caught the day before. Patrick’s skin was black and blue with bite marks that, for the first time ever, he wouldn’t have to hide. It was finally just the two of them. They could finally, finally rest. 

So why did Patrick still feel itchy?

He couldn’t quite settle himself, needing to keep moving his hands even though there weren’t that many records and he didn’t really care and he was  _ so, so  _ tired. He could feel Jonny watching him, and usually he loved it, but the strain of concern was still so palpable, it hung in the air like a string between them. A string that kept tugging on his nerves, pulling tighter and tighter.

“Shit, I think the fire is going out,” Jonny said, moving to get up.

“I’ll get it,” Patrick said. He wasn’t doing it to be thoughtful. He was already up, and Jonny wasn’t. But Jonny pushed past him anyway, poking at the fire until it matched the intensity of his own gaze.

  
“It’s fine, Pat. I don’t need you to do things for me.”

Patrick straightened. Who’d said anything about being needed? He hadn’t, but Jonny had felt the need to remind him he wasn’t anyway.

“Sure, Jon. ‘Course. I’m gonna--I’m gonna run to the bathroom.”

Where he went wasn’t the bathroom, though. At least, not at first. First he stopped in the bedroom, where he removed quietly from his suitcase a small plastic bottle that claimed to be flavored like cherries. It wasn’t, which he knew from the grimace on his face as he stared himself down in the bathroom mirror as he drank it. Whatever. A job was a job and it had done it. He put the bottle all the way in the back of the cabinet behind a wall of toilet paper where he could forget it.

When Patrick reentered the room, he was on his way to feeling warm and cuddly again. Jonny was back on the couch, face peaceful, and Patrick felt a surge of affection--he’d spent weeks missing him, and now here he was, like a miracle. He walked over and settled on top of him, nuzzling that neck that was as strong and stable as ever. Some things never changed. Some things did. He tried not to think about how the hand Jonny was now carding through his hair was his only hand now, tried not to reach for the other one that wasn’t there. The vodka seemed to settle in his veins and it was a little easier.

“I love you,” he whispered, because he did. He could’ve cried, he was so happy they were together and so keenly aware of what they’d lost and so confused over why he wasn’t convinced they were really safe yet, all at once. He had to cling to Jonny just to keep from getting lost in the swirl.

“I love you too.” Jonny smiled softly and pushed a curl from his eyes. His fingers were so soft, Patrick leaned his cheek into them and had to close his eyes to keep them from spilling over. “You sure you’re okay, Peeks?”

“I--it’s just a lot.”

“I know, baby. I know.” Patrick knew he did. Nobody else might, but Jonny did, and they didn’t need to talk about it yet. He rested his head back down, settling as Jonny’s fingers traced shapes on his scalp.

“You wanna go out on the lake tomorrow?” Patrick asked when he thought he could speak without his voice shaking. He was wrong. “I saw it was frozen already. I brought my skates.”

“Nah, the ice isn’t quite strong enough yet. We’ll go soon, though.”

***

He hadn’t meant it to be more than a one-time thing, a bump to smooth the transition. He certainly wasn’t planning to have soon populated the cabin with bottles behind books and flower pots. He hadn’t meant to measure out how many shots he would have to sneak just to keep from upchucking the breakfast Jonny made him, or from snapping back when Jonny snapped that he  _ could do it, Patrick, I’m not fucking crippled,  _ even though, technically, wasn’t he, sort of? And wasn’t that okay, as long as they could figure out how to handle it? And even if he wasn’t, wasn’t it fine for Patrick to want to do things for him? Because they loved each other? Unless Jonny was determined not to need Patrick as much as he needed him, like he always had been. Which, besides being insulting, was a shitty thing to do to someone who you’d dragged all the way to fucking Canada.

Not that, really, Patrick would’ve wanted to be anywhere else. For all their problems, their cabin was _ theirs _ , insulated from the world. It was so small, Jonny swore that in summer you could hear the water from every room. Patrick chopped wood for the fireplace and preened when Jonny told him it was sexy. He got to know the folks in town when he went to get groceries, the butcher and the bakers and such, and laughed as he told Jonny about the advice they’d given “for the wife.” Jonny threw himself into learning to garden and cook with his typical voracity and plotted his return to coaching. They listened to Maple Leafs games on the radio and learned to fuck with seven limbs between them instead of eight.

And through all of it, Patrick was  _ just  _ riding the edge of drunk. Not that he would really get drunk anymore. It was more like getting normal. Like getting back up to zero rather than being in the red. It was a little like skating, actually. Learning to embrace the glide, to be steady when unsteady, to find your balance on ground so slick it was made to watch you fall. What Patrick hadn’t counted on was that this time, there were no boards around to halt the momentum of his crash.

“Fuck!”

It was already dark out when Patrick heard the  _ smash _ from the kitchen, followed by swearing. Patrick rushed over to find the skillet lying on the floor, food scattered on the hardwood, Jonny waving a hand that was angry red and rippled with burns. 

“Shit,” Jonny said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Babe, what happened? Are you okay?” He took Jonny’s hand tenderly, flipping it over to examine it before pulling him to the sink to run it under water. It hurt to look at.

“It’s fine. I just--I thought I could take it out of the oven with just one hand, but it slipped. I’ll--” he winced as the water hit the skin. “I’ll be fine.” 

Patrick rolled his eyes. He felt his nerves tick up in irritation, picking up where the last argument had left off rather than starting a new one. He could feel how tense Jonny was next to him, barely able to contain the pain that  _ he didn’t have to mask around Patrick.  _ Or that he wouldn’t have to, if he would just get that through his thick skull.

“It’s not fine. Look at it, it's burned. We have to go to the doctor. I’ll go get the keys.”

“No.” Jonny yanked his hand away then, his deep voice suddenly childish. “I’m not going to some doctor who’s just gonna tell me not to use it for two weeks or whatever and then what, I’ve got no hands? I’ll pass, thanks.” 

“Um, news flash, Jon. It's still burned whether you get it fixed or not.” 

“Fuck you, it’s not that bad.” But it was obvious from the way he was holding his hand that it was really hurt, and suddenly Patrick softened. He wanted for all the world to just wrap his arms around Jonny and fix it. He wanted to take care of him, to tell him to let him take the reins, even just for a moment. But Jonny wouldn’t let him, and that was the problem, like it always was. They had this argument all the time, and Patrick could feel them sliding into a place that soon, they wouldn’t be able to come back from. He felt a trill of fear, a desperate urge to go back. He cautiously crossed the kitchen so they were close again.

“So you can’t use it for two weeks. Is that really the worst thing in the world?”

“Yes,  _ obviously _ ,” Jonny snapped. And like being doused with cold water, Patrick felt all his soft urges go icy and chilled as they frosted over.

“Because then I’d have to do things for you, right?” he said quietly, stepping back and crossing his arms. “Because  _ needing me  _ is the worst thing in the world to you.”

“Fuck you. Don’t say it like that.” 

“That’s what you just said.  _ The worst thing in the world. _ ” 

Not,  _ I do need you,  _ not  _ I’m sorry baby, I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.  _ He’d said,  _ Don’t say it like that.  _ The lack of a denial made him feel sick, and suddenly he was certain that all his fears were true.

“But I guess that’s not really a surprise, right?” he went on. “Because you’ve always been this way. When we first got together, when I went to school, in Vietnam. You’ve always been this way.”

“I’ve always been what way?” Jonny spat.

“Determined not to need me.” 

“Oh, so suddenly I’m an asshole because I wanna take care of you?” 

“No, you’re an asshole because I’ve followed your ass all over the goddamn globe and you can’t even act like the feeling is mutual!” He was finally shouting, and he swore the shoddy walls of the cabin shook.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Patrick? I say I love you all the time.”

“But you never say you need me. You never ask me to do anything for you, you never even asked me to come out here, for Christ's sake! If it was up to you, I’d still be at IU while you went off and got killed and we never spoke again.” Jonny flinched at the old wound but Patrick kept going. He was on a roll. “If I told you right now that it was between me  _ leaving  _ and you asking me to stay, I bet anything you’d let me walk away.”   
  
“Oh yeah? That’s what you think?”

“Yeah, that’s what I think.”

“Well forgive me for not putting all my trust in the guy who’s drunk half the time!”

And suddenly the roll came to a complete stop. 

It was like the world stopped turning, like his heart stopped beating. It was like Jonny had hit him, or more accurately, like he’d hit himself. 

“You know?”

“Of course I fucking know!” Jonny was fully turned away from him now, gripping the kitchen counter while Patrick stared at his back in the low kitchen light. “You think I don’t know you well enough to tell when you’re checked out? This place isn’t that big. It didn’t take that long to find a bottle of mint schnapps in the garden, which, by the way, does  _ not  _ taste like toothpaste.”

It was quiet, and Patrick’s mouth had run dry. The evidence sat between them as clearly as if Jonny had gathered the bottles and lined them up on the table. The jig was up. The con was over. The precious balance, the tenuous glide he’d been perfecting, had broken like a blowout and he’d slammed his head into the ice. After a long moment, he cleared his throat enough to answer. 

“So if you  _ don’t  _ need me because you  _ can’t  _ need me because I’m just a worthless drunk, why am I still here, Jon?”

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t what he got. 

“I don’t know, Patrick. I really don’t know.”

It was quiet when he said it. It was quieter still when Patrick fished in the back of the cabinets for the bottle that was hidden there. Jonny didn’t look up at the sound of the cap on the counter, and the swallows Patrick took were soundless. But still, somehow, the sound of the door closing behind him was the softness noise of all. 

***

He wasn’t sure how long it had been when it happened. It could’ve been hours or it could have been days. Lying in the middle of the frozen lake, Patrick felt he had been there for years.

His back was against the ice, and even through the shell of his jacket he could feel the cold radiating upward, like a small sea lapping at his whiskey-warmed skin. He felt like he always did when he was this drunk--like he was floating on the surface of the ocean, unsteady even when unmoving, and with the sneaking suspicion that if he  _ did  _ try to move he’d be bowled over by one of the waves.

His hair had gotten so long--he still hadn’t cut it since returning home, preferring instead for it to be another measure of time since he’d been discharged. It curled around his ears and piled around his neck now. He wondered if it would stick to the ice if he stayed here long enough. With the stars and the moon spread out above him, everything distant and nothing close but the remembrance of all those stars had overseen, or maybe just the feeling that those stars had seen some shit, since for once he was taking a break from remembering; he wasn’t sure why he would ever move. Ever. So would he become a part of the ice? He thought that might be nice, to stretch out and simply exist through the winter and be gone when the spring came. He didn’t think he could handle another change of season. He thought he had been through enough.

“Patrick?”

Patrick thought he heard a voice calling his name, but it sounded like it was coming from a thousand yards away, maybe, as a conservative estimate, from across a rice field or a battlefield or maybe a place where those were one in the same, and that couldn’t be right, because all his friends were gone. They’d been a family and they’d become everything and now they were just pieces in the wind, scattered. The ones who were lucky enough. So he took another swig. He wiped the back of his mouth with his glove and it felt like the most he’d moved in  _ hours-- _ and in a second the sip had done its work, and it was just Patrick and the stars again, and he was going there, almost, toward that place he’d always dreamed about when he looked at them, away from the Earth, where none of it mattered--that he was gay, or that he was a hopeless fuck-up, or that his best friend had died following him, or that he had spent a year of his life collecting scars for a conflict which in the end, meant nothing. 

“Patrick? There you are.  _ Fuck,  _ I was worried.”

The voice was getting louder, which meant it might be real, and Patrick had just enough time to turn his head before he heard the ice beneath him crack.

“Patrick!”

But Patrick couldn’t hear Jonny, because he’d been sucked down into the lake. He couldn’t hear anything but the rush of water in his ears, couldn’t feel anything but the lurch in his stomach as the floor dropped out beneath him, couldn’t see anything but the ice seemingly closing back up above him. The shock of it came to him dimly, so dimly, and if it was anyone else he would have been thrashing and fighting to keep alive, but Patrick had  _ already  _ been swimming in a sea of booze, and so now it seemed only to have swallowed him, which was what he had wanted all along.

While he was down there, falling back endlessly into the dark suck of the water, for a long moment it seemed all of it was down there with him. He saw his family, smilingly unaware of who he was. He saw Tyler, Segs, out in some Dallas of perpetual pining and vaguely hoped he and Jamie were together now. He saw Artemi, who he never got to say goodbye to, and the bartenders who had saluted him for his service, and the Sergeant standing over him like he was a disgrace to that service. And then he saw  _ all  _ the guys from his squad he never got to say goodbye to, ending with Sharpy, forever young and boyish, who, more than anything else, Patrick just wished he could call.

And then there was a strong arm hauling him up by the shoulder, and icy air hitting his face, and then the moon was blocked out by-- _ Jonny.  _ When had he gotten here? Why had he ever left? Patrick smiled and lifted a gloved hand to his cheek, too distracted by the big brown eyes--why did they look so upset? Patrick wanted to tell him it would be okay, it would all be okay, baby, what could be so bad if they were there together?--to register that Jonny was saying something about an ambulance. And then he had been set back down on the ice, and Jonny was gone, and he wanted him to come  _ back,  _ so he turned to tell him and ended up vomiting onto the ice instead. 

The next person to talk to him was very soothing and let him hold Jonny’s hand all the way to the hospital. It was so nice, being able to hold Jonny’s hand in front of other people for once, and the last thing Patrick was conscious of thinking was that he must have died and gone to heaven.

***

In the end, they kept him in the hospital for two weeks, which was about a week longer than they had when he got discharged from Vietnam. 

They made him do all the things he had been afraid to do in the safety of his home with Jonny. They made sure he didn’t have withdrawal seizures. They made him sweat it out. They wouldn’t give him any pills and they looked unimpressed when he got angry about that. They got him a doctor to talk to him about the war, and they made him sit in a circle of other addicts and admit he needed help--the doctor told him to think of it like practice for telling the people who really mattered. They made him finally tear his body back down to the boards, so he could rebuild his brain in such a way that it could stand on its own. 

And then one day, when he got back to his room after talking to the group, Jonny was sitting there waiting on the bed. He was wearing a sweater and staring out the window at the setting sun, fingers bandaged up and trying absently to scratch at them. He looked clean, and soft, and so beautiful in spite of the shadows under his eyes. So much had passed between them, but some things never changed. Patrick was afraid to step into the room and all the things that brought with it; to step into the new world of their relationship, whatever that might mean. But suddenly Jonny looked up and it had happened, ready or not. His face melted, and when he stood up to meet Patrick he hesitated in a way that Jonathan Toews didn’t hesitate about anything. Anything, of course, besides him. And suddenly Patrick knew, as certainly as he’d ever known anything, that Jonny was scared too. That he needed Patrick just as much as Patrick needed him, if not more, and that he was the exception to Jonny’s rules and that that made it hard but it made it precious, too.

“Jonny,” he said. “Can we--”

“Yeah, Peeks. Let’s go home.” 

It was an hour long drive, and by the time they got home it was dark. Snow had fallen since Patrick was last there, and they crunched quietly through it to get to the door. Patrick thought he couldn’t feel more relieved to be home than he was in that moment, but then when he stepped into the living room it was warm and full of light. The tiny room was dominated by a Christmas tree, decorated and lit up with a single present underneath. And  _ oh-- _ it was Christmas Eve, wasn’t it? Patrick hadn’t even realized what day it was. When he turned to Jonny he was smiling uncertainly again. 

“Jonny, how did you--”

“My brother came up for a bit. Just to help while you were gone, you know. You should thank him, not me. He did most of the work.” 

“You--”

“Yes,” Jonny rolled his eyes, but he was smiling fondly, which meant everything could be normal again after all. “I asked another human being for help. Are you proud of me?”

“Yeah, Jonny. I am.” He meant it, and he thought Jonny could tell from the way he looked down and blushed. 

“Yeah, well. I… I’m trying, Peeks. It's hard, but I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” Patrick said, and it was true, even if he hadn’t seen it before. They just stood there, smiling dumbly at each other for a moment before Jonny cleared his throat.

“So can I give you your present then or not?”

“I didn’t get you anything.” Patrick had spent the past two weeks dealing with his drinking, but it still twisted his gut to know he’d been drunk all the way through Christmas season. 

“It’s alright,” Jonny said, reaching out to squeeze his hand before going to the tree. “I don’t get my bandages off for another week, so I’m sure you’ll more than make it up to me with all the cooking you’ll have to do.” Patrick broke out into a full grin then.

“I don’t know if my cooking is that much of a gift, but I’ll try.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. And--” and there it was again, that delicately hopeful look he’d only ever given to Patrick, “there’s always next year, right?”

“Yeah. There’s always next year.” 

_ We are still us. You’re still it for me.  _ When he unwrapped the gift, it was a copy of the new Simon and Garfunkel record,  _ Bridge Over Troubled Water. _

“Oh my God,” Patrick said. “I listened to so much Simon and Garfunkel when I was missing you at IU.”

“I know. It's been a long way since then, eh?”

Patrick immediately went to put it on. He started a fire in the fireplace, too, letting himself feel the sweetness of building it for Jonny. Finally he got up, and they stood together in the middle of the floor as the music filled the room. When Jonny pulled him to his chest, it felt like they were finally themselves again. Like they could touch with nothing between them for the first time in months.  _ Now  _ he was home.

“I’m so sorry, Jonny,” he breathed, wetting the wool of Jonny’s sweater as he clung to his middle. He wasn’t even sure how to say what for anymore, there was so much, and it was all so overwhelming. There was so much to parse through, and so much work to do, but Jonny was running his fingers through his hair and it was so soft it almost hurt. 

“I know you are, Peeks. You don’t have to be sorry to me.” But he did, and he was about to say so when Jonny went on. “I just can’t believe that I almost lost you  _ again  _ because I was so stubborn.” 

“It’s not your fault that I’m an--an alcoholic.”

Jonny put a finger under his chin and he was beaming when he looked up at him.

“Baby, you said it. You said it, and that means we can deal with it. I’m so proud of you.” 

Patrick settled his cheek against Jonny’s chest again. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, the lights of the tree and the fire glowed through. He drew a shuddering breath. Jonny wasn’t ashamed of him. Jonny was proud, and maybe he could still be a person worth being proud of. After everything, Jonny still wanted him. After everything, they were finally safe.

“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we, Jonny?”

“Yeah baby, we are.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titled for the 1969 Rolling Stones classic.


	11. These Days (Reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening: "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Or, if you really wanna get in the mood and are cool with being out of time period, the cover of "Blood Bank" by the Mountain Goats is really lovely.

_ December 1974 _

_ Whitemouth Lake, Manitoba _

The floor of the cabin was creaky. If you were going to get up first, you had to be stealthy. Luckily Patrick had always been light on his feet. 

The hallway was short, but he passed a good dozen photos on the wall anyway: the two-year anniversary trip to Hawaii; the surviving members of Blackhawks Squad, reunited at a restaurant in Chicago; Patrick’s graduation from IU earlier that summer; Jonny’s first regional title as a coach; Patrick holding Jackie’s first kid; the ancient single photo of their trip to Dallas. He passed them silently, padding toward the kitchen, giving absent head scratches to the dog that met him there. His eyes searched out the coffee maker as he turned the light on over the stove. It was dark, and would be for most of the day, this deep in the winter and this far north. But he didn’t need a lot of light to make a few eggs. They ate a _ lot  _ of eggs--that’ll happen when your partner is Jonathan Toews and he decides you need to own seven chickens.

He ate breakfast standing at the counter, dropping an occasional bite of egg to the dog, using the low light to leave a few last-minute notes on Jonny’s playbook. Mostly to comment that his new line combinations wouldn’t work--didn’t he know that McLeod and Doyle were warring over homecoming dates? They were both in the fifth period Calculus class Patrick taught, and he heard a lot of gossip. 

He left coffee in the pot and eggs in the fridge when he left. He usually made breakfast, Jonny made dinner, and they both ate pretty well.

It had been a good night of sleep and he felt fresh, bright, shiny and hopeful. It wasn’t always like that--routinely one or both of them would wake up in the night panicked, yelling out for their platoon, and the other would have to pin him down until he stopped kicking, whispering things like the date and where they were and that they were loved and safe. It was familiar enough by this point that just the ritual of it was grounding, and they usually calmed down within a few minutes. They’d curl into each other then, sleeping in positions that left their backs crooked but their breathing steady. Their record was one week straight of uninterrupted sleep. But Patrick didn’t really think it mattered, because it had also been nearly four years since they’d slept apart.

The sky was just starting to lighten when Patrick pulled into the school parking lot. He knew Jonny was probably feeding the chickens, who Patrick hated, and unknowingly feeding a second breakfast to the dog, who Patrick loved. He could picture Jonny sitting at the table, frowning over Patrick’s notes, whispering  _ shit  _ as he worked out where to move his usual second-line center. His hair would still be mussed from sleep, the flannel clinging to his broad shoulders soft where Patrick had buried his face in it last night. The light would be seeping out over the lake, a frost on the ice to match the frost of Jonny’s breath against the window. His brow would be furrowed, but not for long. His biggest worry these days was how to beat their division rival, and Patrick was proud of having had a small hand in that lack of worry. 

The school day passed mostly without incident, as most days did now. At first Patrick had tried to think of how Sharpy would’ve done things as a teacher, but then he remembered them smoking pot together behind the bleachers and crossed that out pretty quickly. He couldn’t raise a joint to Sharpy’s memory these days, but every now and then he lit a cigarette for him. He’d smoke it and try to think of a good memory for every puff. It wasn’t quite the same, but it would have to do. 

He graded some papers, gave some lectures, tutored through lunch, geeked out on stats with some of his favorite students. Before he knew it the day was over and it was time to go and get Jonny.

Tonight was a game night for the high school’s varsity program, but Jonny also coached JV, middle school, and a couple different programs for little ones (which, secretly, were Patrick’s favorite.) Those kids still had to practice, which meant that the rink was a revolving door of skaters on nights like these. Not that Jonny was upset about that. He took it all in stride, sheltering players under his wing, and kids looked all up to him from all up and down the program. If they couldn’t have children of their own, this felt like a pretty good compromise. So tonight he had to drop Jonny at the school before making the hour drive to his AA meeting in the next town over, spending an hour there before making the trip back just in time for the game. 

“So,” Jonny said on the way to practice, voice nonchalant. “You looking forward to your totally normal meeting today?” 

“My totally normal meeting?” 

“Just an average, everyday meeting, right? Nothing special happening today at all?” 

As always, Jonny’s poker face was shit, and Patrick could see the tiny smile he was hiding. Patrick knew Jonny had been counting down the days, he had seen it circled on the calendar in the back of his coaching schedule.

“Yup,” Patrick said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Pretty average all the way around.”

They batted around conversation topics, the school day, teacher gossip, Jackie and the kids coming up after Christmas to visit. Their lives were so quiet there wasn’t a ton to talk about, but Patrick somehow never tired of hearing the sound of Jonny’s voice. Soon they had pulled up to the school, and Jonny got out to go run practice. Patrick almost thought he wasn’t going to say anything, but right before he pulled away Jonny turned and popped his head in the window. 

“And hey,” he said, eyes brimming with pride. “Happy four years, baby.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Jonny.”

“Not true,” he said, but they both knew it was. “Go, get to your meeting. Take your victory lap. You earned it,” he teased, slapping the door of the truck. “We’ll celebrate for real tonight. I tested the ice while you were at work, I think it's finally cold enough out.” 

Patrick grinned. God help him, he loved this man. 

“I’m gonna hold you to that!” he called after Jonny’s receding form. He pulled away, stepping on the gas to make sure he wouldn’t be late. 

***

The church basement where Patrick attended his AA meetings had become something of a second home. It was dark, and cold, and the coffee was absolute shit even if you had to drink it to stay warm. But he loved it. Patrick had spent so much of his life feeling isolated and alone, that a room full of people he understood implicitly was one of his favorite places to be. 

He jogged to his seat after grabbing his coffee, greeting Bobby and Nate and Robin before the meeting began. Five minutes in, it was his time to shine.

“Any birthdays?” the chairperson asked, looking around the room. Patrick took a deep breath and stood, somehow nervous even though he knew every person in the room better than he knew his own parents. 

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Patrick, and I’m an alcoholic. And I have four years sober today.” 

The dozen pairs of hands seemed to thunder in applause. The metal chip they pressed into his hand burned like a championship ring. He beamed at the small circle, people whose lives he’d heard at their highest highs and lowest lows, men and women he never thought he’d have anything in common with. They were now his people, the same way the guys at the gay bar in Texas had felt like his people all those years ago, and the same way the Hawks had after that. Funny things it will do to you, going into battle with people. Even if in this case, the battle was just getting through the day. 

“Would you like to start the discussion then today, Patrick?” 

“Sure, why not,” he said, still smiling. “I’ve been thinking about the past some lately, and it's funny. I used to drink to get out of my own head because I didn’t like being there. I didn’t want to be  _ who  _ I was, and then the war happened and I didn’t want to be  _ where _ I was either. And I spent so much time avoiding those two things that when it was all over, I didn’t know what was left. I had to start over from scratch.” He thought of that stretch of time where the memories were all full of holes, where the uniting factor was just nothingness. “But I  _ did _ , you know, thanks to you guys and my partner and stuff. And I made a new thing, and now, I don’t have to escape myself anymore because I like what I built. I don’t  _ wanna  _ be anywhere but the moment because the moment is good, and even when it's not, I know it will be again. It sounds like a small thing, but I wasn’t always sure. I could’ve been dead so many times, but I’m not. I’m so lucky. I’m lucky to even have the bad days. Not everyone gets to have them.” They flashed into his mind again briefly--his friends--and then let the memory go. “My sponsor says it's like the skater and the pond. I used to think that I was the pond, and my only two options were to let every bad thing drop in me like a stone, and ripple through my entire self… Or to freeze over completely. But I don't have to be the pond. I can be the skater. I can be above it, and glide on it, and feel it, and let it support me, and still get off the ice after. I can let it go. So I guess it's not that I’m great all the time, because I’m definitely not. But I’m okay enough to hang on until I will be again. Because I have what matters, and we’ll get through it, as long as I stay sober to do it.”

After the meeting he would normally stay to talk, letting his styrofoam cup of coffee run cold while they bitched about cravings and kids and sports scores and chickens. Not today, though. Today he had a game to catch. 

***

He got to his spot right as the Canadian national anthem was finishing. Same seat as always, towards the top of the middle section facing the bench, best view of the action  _ and  _ the coach. Who, by the way, was very cute, and might even have just winked up at him.

It wasn’t their best game ever. The Fighting Walleyes came out looking sluggish in the first, but Jonny stuck with the changes he’d made and finally they clicked, the defensive pressure ratcheting up to ten and the offense slotting into place. It wasn’t quite enough to make the comeback, but Patrick knew it would be enough to convince Jonny they were going in the right direction. He’d be in a good mood on the way home, proud of the way his kids played, as he should be. They were a great group. Maybe even a regional championship group. Although Patrick’s main concern at this point was that they were a group that would turn in their geometry homework, too.

“The defense is so much further along than this time last year. And that Nolan kid?” he said as they broke down the game on the way home. “The sophomore you just bumped up? He is really something, babe.”

“Yeah, he’s going to be in the show someday for sure. Although it's kind of a pain in my ass, having scouts from Boston and Minnesota here every other game.” He was smiling though, and Patrick knew how much he enjoyed having a _ protege _ . “He’s a good kid. Deserves it.”

“So serious, though. Reminds me of someone I used to know,” Patrick teased, enjoying how deliberately Jonny was  _ not  _ looking at him. As long as he was in a good mood, Patrick decided to remind him of his promise. “You had mentioned something earlier about it finally being cold out?” he said, feigning casualness with all the transparency of a window.

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to bring the chickens in soon,” Jonny replied coolly, refusing to take the bait, eyes never leaving his notes even in the dark car. 

“What do you mean, bring in the chickens?”   
  
“Well, they can’t stay out in the snow all winter, can they?” Patrick almost drove them off the road. 

“Where are we gonna put them, Jon?”

“The second bedroom? It's not like we use it.” 

“They’re chickens!” 

But when he looked over again Jonny was grinning at him like a dork. He gave him a punch on the shoulder. After five years he still riled him up so easily.

“ _ Oh _ ,” Jonny said dramatically. “Wait, did you have something else in mind for the cold weather?”

“You’re a bastard, you know that?”

When they pulled up to the cabin it was like they’d worked eight minutes instead of eight hours, like they were ten instead of going-on-twenty-five. They clamored noisily inside, changing and lacing up skates and grabbing pucks and sticks from the backyard shed. It was finally time for the first skate of the season.

Patrick was always grateful for the rink at the school, and he was a frequent fixture there over the summers. But there was nothing like open ice. After he’d quit drinking, Patrick had been afraid that he’d lost that feeling for good--the feeling of floating, of flying. But with blades on his feet and the wind at his cheeks he’d found it, just where it always had been. On skates he was weightless, but he was weightless because of the strength of his skills, of his legs, not the strength of his stomach keeping down another drink. He got there under his own steam, and he never felt more powerful than when he was under the stars, slicing shapes into the surface of the lake. 

They glided around for a while, chirped each other, played keep-away. Eventually they got out their nets and the game was on. Patrick tried to stickhandle around Jonny and Jonny tried to defend with his massive ass. The score ran up neck-and-neck until they’d exhausted themselves, deciding that the next goal would win. The pressure was truly staggering, but in the end Patrick delivered, pushing Jonny back until he was basically playing goalie before delivering a shot straight through the legs. 

“And he scores!” Patrick put on his best announcer voice. “Patrick Kane has defeated the great Jonathan Toews, legendary goalie of the Great White North! He went five-hole on that one, ladies and gents, but I have a feeling it’ll be the other way around tonight.”

He sailed around Jonny, who was having to work entirely too hard to look sour. Jonny let his stick clatter to the ground, pushing off with his strong legs to chase Patrick down and swing him around until they collapsed together onto the ice in a heap of giggling and limbs.

Finally, after Patrick cried uncle, they situated themselves so they were sitting on the ice, Patrick spooned between the V of Jonny’s legs, his arm solidly gripping Patrick’s waist. They caught their breath and it caught on each other like cobwebs, silvery puffs against the black sky and the cool expanse of the lake. 

“Five-hole?” Jonny said from behind his ear. “Really?” 

Patrick just responded with a kiss to the side of Jonny’s face. Fuck, he was exhausted. 

Finally, when it got too cold even for them, they unlaced their skates and trudged inside. Patrick put their gear out to dry while Jonny started the water heating up in the shower. 

When Patrick entered the bathroom, Jonny’s clothes were already on the floor. Wordless and suddenly breathless, Patrick came to stand in front of him, raising his arms in a silent ask. Together they lifted the shirt from his head before Jonny knelt to remove his socks and jeans. He stood again after, taking Patrick’s hand so they could step into the shower together. They faced the water, and Patrick gasped at the heat of it, the water coming at him from one side and Jonny wrapped around him on the other. His smooth skin cloaked solid muscles, closing Patrick in from every angle. Steam filled every empty space. 

Patrick leaned back to expose his throat and Jonny obliged, attaching himself to Patrick by the teeth, hand ghosting down his stomach. Jonny started whispering then, voice low and immediate and feathered between kisses. It disappeared into the rhythm of the water hitting the floor like music. Anchored with one hand in Jonny’s hair and the other on his thigh, Patrick had to dig his nails in to keep his legs from going weak. Not that Jonny wouldn’t have him if they did. Jonny always had him.

Patrick found himself melting into the touch in spite of himself, the two of them slicking together like one body, which was hardly surprising when it came to Jonny. Years of intimacy backed by years of want played themselves out every night now, and Patrick thought of how his desire for Jonny had never dipped, not even for a moment. He wanted him, craved him still, needed to be in his orbit even when they were irritating each other. He backed against the wall when Jonny boxed him in there. He moved under Jonny’s capable touch like water. He was easy for him, and time had made him only easier still. Part of him was sure he’d touched every inch of Jonny’s skin, but he’d die before he stopped pursuing that certainty. 

The rhythm of Jonny’s words gave way to a stuttered percussion of gasps, of breathing that echoed off the tile and into the hallway. There was the heady sensation of being desired, the fingers like fire, the insatiable appetite that never got old. The world zeroed in until it was just the two of them. What else could there be? They gave in, they fell apart. They cracked open. They did it together and it made it much easier to pick up the shuddering pieces. 

They washed each other off after that, Jonny soothing shampoo into sections of hair he’d pulled just a minute before. Normally they’d bicker about the water temperature, but it had been a long day, and Patrick wasn’t sure he could muster the energy to speak. Only to smile, and even that was only because he couldn’t help himself and it took so few muscles. 

They got out and stumbled into the bedroom. Begrudgingly they pulled on pajamas, acquiescing to the Manitoban winter. Jonny helped Patrick tug the sweatshirt over his head, facewashing him in the process. Patrick bit his hand and Jonny swatted him on the ass. They fell into bed, floating all the way down. They didn’t need to set an alarm; tomorrow was Saturday, and the day was theirs. 

Jonny turned out the lamp, and soon the only light was the moon. It shone through their white curtains, a soft blue that fuzzed out a room that didn’t need to be anything besides what it was. There was nowhere to run to. Nothing to escape from. All of it was soft, from the quilt over them to the sweatshirt on his skin to the breathing tickling the back of Patrick’s neck. It was all lost on him, though; he was asleep before he hit the mattress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Named after "These Days" by Jackson Brown, which is a cover of "These Days" by Nico from earlier in the fic. Hope you enjoyed <3


End file.
